Saturday, August 4, 2018

Research has predominantly focused on the negative effects of adversity on health and well-being; but under certain circumstances, adversity may have the potential for positive outcomes, such as increased resilience and thriving (steeling effect)

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A Salutogenic Perspective on Adverse Experiences. The Curvilinear Relationship of Adversity and Well-Being. Jan Höltge et al. European Journ...

The Status Signals Paradox: When making new friends, people tend to think that displaying high-status markers will make them more attractive to others, but they are found to be less attractive

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The Status Signals Paradox. Stephen M. Garcia, Kimberlee Weaver, Patricia Chen.Social Psychological and Personality Science, https://doi.org...

Peripheral Factors Affecting the Evaluation of Artworks: When described as created by famous artists, the works were liked more and judged more interesting & beautiful & participants (n = 309), all art nonexperts, also were willing to pay more to see the works

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Peripheral Factors Affecting the Evaluation of Artworks. Stefano Mastandrea, William D. Crano. Empirical Studies of the Arts, https://doi.or...

Male Testosterone Does Not Adapt to the Partner's Menstrual Cycle

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Ström JO, Ingberg E, Slezak JK, et al. Male Testosterone Does Not Adapt to the Partner's Menstrual Cycle. The Journal of Sexual Medicine...

Big fires in California are less frequent and area burnt is smaller since at least 1970

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Different historical fire–climate patterns in California. Jon E. Keeley and Alexandra D. Syphard. International Journal of Wildland Fire 26(...
Friday, August 3, 2018

Does physical attractiveness buy happiness? Women’s mating motivation and happiness

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Does physical attractiveness buy happiness? Women’s mating motivation and happiness. Ahra Ko, Eunkook M. Suh. Motivation and Emotion, https:...

Both nonfiscal (external and internal imbalances) & fiscal variables help predict crises among advanced & emerging economies, performing well in out-of-sample forecasting & in predicting the most recent crises, a weakness of EWS in general

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Predicting Fiscal Crises. Svetlana Cerovic ; Kerstin Gerling ; Andrew Hodge ; Paulo Medas. IMF Working Paper No. 18/181, August 3, 2018. htt...

40‐ and especially 50‐year‐old women did appear significantly younger when wearing makeup, 30‐year‐old women looked no different in age with or without makeup, & 20‐year‐old women looked older with makeup

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Differential effects of makeup on perceived age. Richard Russell et al. British Journal of Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12337 Ab...

Frequent consumption of fast foods (≥2 times/week) was only weakly associated with increased odds of being obese; some evidence suggests healthy food interventions may even exacerbate obesity

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Evolutionary considerations on social status, eating behavior, and obesity. Ann E.Caldwell, R. DrewSayer. Appetite, https://doi.org/10.1016/...

Conversations between co‐witnesses in the immediate aftermath of witnessed events and co‐witness retellings of witnessed events often impair both the quality and quantity of information reported subsequently

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Memory at the Sharp End: The Costs of Remembering With Others in Forensic Contexts. Lorraine Hope, Fiona Gabbert. Topics in Cognitive Scienc...
Thursday, August 2, 2018

From Coercion to Physical Force: Aggressive Strategies Used by Women Against Men in “Forced-to-Penetrate” Cases in the UK

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From Coercion to Physical Force: Aggressive Strategies Used by Women Against Men in “Forced-to-Penetrate” Cases in the UK. Siobhan Weare. Ar...

Deception in Nature: Small dogs imitate big dogs' urine markings

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Urine marking in male domestic dogs: honest or dishonest? B. McGuire et al. Journal of Zoology, https://doi.org/10.1111/jzo.12603 Abstract: ...

Hitler’s speeches, while rationally targeted, had a negligible impact on the Nazis’ electoral fortunes; only the 1932 presidential runoff, an election preceded by an extraordinarily short, intense and one-sided campaign, yielded positive effects

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Munzert, Simon. 2018. “Examining a Most Likely Case for Strong Campaign Effects: Hitler’s Speeches and the Rise of the Nazi Party, 1927–1933...

Building on the notion that people respond to media as if they were real, they study switching off a robot which exhibits lifelike behavior; participants have problems to execute the task when the robot asks them not to be switched off

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Do a robot’s social skills and its objection discourage interactants from switching the robot off? Aike C. Horstmann et al. PLOS One, July 3...

The bystander effect, the reduction in helping behavior in the presence of other people, has been explained predominantly by situational influences on decision making; we highlight recent evidence on the neural mechanisms and dispositional factors that determine apathy in bystanders

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From Empathy to Apathy: The Bystander Effect Revisited. Ruud Hortensius, Beatrice de Gelder. Current Directions in Psychological Science, ht...
Wednesday, August 1, 2018

All the interactions took the form of subjects rating stories offering ‘ammunition’ for their own side of the controversial issue as possessing greater intrinsic news importance

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Perceptions of newsworthiness are contaminated by a political usefulness bias. Harold Pashler, Gail Heriot. Royal Society Open Science, http...

Belief in God: Why People Believe, and Why They Don’t

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Belief in God: Why People Believe, and Why They Don’t. Brett Mercier, Stephanie R. Kramer, Azim F. Shariff. Current Directions in Psychologi...