Psych in the news

"Patients often have difficulty getting the help they need — partly because therapists tend to regard borderline patients as manipulative and demanding of an inordinate amount of time and attention." A nice column in the NYT by Jane Brody on borderline personality disorder. Questions can be left for a BPD expert here and she'll provide answers to some of them next week.

"I am not trying to say cats are stupid, just they are different." A British researcher finds cats none too bright in her little tests. (No word as to whether she was clawed to death shortly after publishing her findings.)

Even the world’s best pros are so consumed with avoiding bogeys that they make putts for birdie discernibly less often than identical-length putts for par, according to research by two Wharton School professors.

Is alcohol really good for you? A nice causation v. correlation piece.

One of the most celebrated findings in modern psychiatry — that a single gene helps determine one’s risk of depression in response to a divorce, a lost job or another serious reversal — has not held up to scientific scrutiny, researchers reported Tuesday.

Really, I swear this one will work! The next big weight-loss craze involves sprinkling stuff on your food to enhance the smell and taste ... so you eat less.

But now researchers are beginning to unearth clues as to how savants' formidable brains work, and that in turn is changing our view of what it means to be a savant. Also, see this related link of art done by savants (like the one at the top of this post).

How does language shape thinking? Great essay here by a Stanford prof whose research finds evidence for the old (and new again?) Whorf hypothesis.

Finally, I just found this (thanks to the fabulous Mindhacks) and haven't had a chance to check it out -- so please, if you do, leave your thoughts in the comments! -- but here is Weird Al and Al's Brain, a 3-D Journey into the Human Brain. (P.S. I love the t-shirt below if anyone's looking for the perfect birthday present ...)

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Psych in the news

Starting this week PitN will come out on a regular-ish schedule on Mondays and Thursdays. Like what you read? Post a comment below or send me (ashejones@gmail.com) a note! --Steve

"The larger point is that liberals and conservatives often form judgments through flash intuitions that aren’t a result of a deliberative process." -- Great column from Nicholas Kristof that examines various issues such as group polarization, moral values, disgust and more. There are also links to yourmorals.org (where one can take online tests in areas such as personality, war and peace, and disgust) and civilpolitics.org on moral psychology.

“Intelligence and academic achievement are very much under people’s control.” Another fascinating column by Kristof that looks at the work of Richard Nisbett (new book is Intelligence and How to Get It) on how groups such Asian-Americans, Jews and West Indian blacks "help debunk the myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect."

"There is an old saying that two heads are better than one. In a fascinating new article in Psychological Science, Stefan Herzog and Ralph Hertwig turned the old aphorism on its head: One head can be nearly as good as two."(Scientific American)

From BoingBoing: "Stanford's Robert Sapolsky, one of the most interesting anthropologists I've heard lecture, gives us 90 minutes on the evolutionary basis for literal religious belief, "metamagical thinking," schizotypal personality and so on, explaining how evolutionarily, the mild schizophrenic expression we called "schizotypal personality" have enjoyed increased reproductive opportunities."

I used excerpts from the book in class this past semester with great success and now someone has typed in all 50 with brief synopses. Excellent! Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive (from Robert Cialdini et al.)

Utrecht University sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst surveyed 604 people about their friends and again seven years later, and found that only 48 percent of people’s original friends were still part of their network after that time period. (via Freakonomics)

Jonah Lehrer looks at research that shows that the brains of kids with ADHD really are different (in terms of cortical thickness) but that this difference disappears by adolescence. He also makes reference to his New Yorker article from last month on self-control which was terrific.



Finally, Lehrer also discusses the above dancing video (also here if the link ist kaput) in relation to Stanley Milgram's experiment on conformity where he had confederates in New York City stop and look up and then compared the number of people who also stopped and looked. And the video below (also here) is a modern re-creation of that experiment.

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Psych in the news

[I'm guessing everyone is in AP mode, but in case you've got students who aren't taking the exam and are twiddling their thumbs, send 'em here! I'll post several a day over the next few days to clear out my bookmarks.]

• "Mr. Anecdote-Means-a-Trend" Malcolm Gladwell spins another amusing tale, this time about the strategies that underdogs use to win. Deadspin takes him to task on his lack of knowledge of basketball: "sooner or later you run into a Goliath who can dribble through a trap."
• New research may help unlock vegetative and minimally conscious patients.
• Why do poor kids have more trouble in school? Is it due to environment or biology? The answer, according to a new study, may be both.
• The perils of analyzing test scores by race. Plus, a follow-up.
• Relax. NBA players choke under pressure too.
• Does President Obama have the motivation to succeed?
• Bilingual infants have better mental control
• Is fatigue really just all in our heads?
• Yes, looks do matter. (Susan Boyle)
• Ear plugs to lasers: the science of concentration ("multitasking is a myth")
  

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