Psych in the news

In an op-ed column on race, Charles Blow focuses on Harvard's Implicit Association Test and the findings that most whites "harbor a hidden bias" against blacks. Direct links to the tests are here ... and here's a 2006 column (and follow-up blog post) by John Tierney presenting the evidence against the IAT. (All from the NY Times)

A new paper in the Journal of Social Issues shows that multiracial adolescents who identify proudly as multiracial fare as well as — and, in many cases, better than — kids who identify with a single group, even if that group is considered high-status (like, say, Asians or whites). (Time)

Newsweek traces the history of the alleged autism-vaccination link in its Anatomy of a Scare.

Researchers found in a small study of 30 young iPod users that teens not only tend to play their music louder than adults but, often, are unaware of how loud they're playing it, and are thus unaware of their risk of subsequent hearing loss. (Time)

The FDA approves deep brain stimulation as a treatment for OCD. (Chicago Tribune)

And finally, this is just sad. Not only did research show the men view bikini-clad women as objects (based on 21 Princeton boys as subjects) but no one has actually bothered to see if the same is true in reverse ("women may also depersonalize men in certain situations, but published research on the subject has not been done"). Sigh. (CNN)