Monday, March 25, 2019

Is the Putative Mirror Neuron System Associated with Empathy? Only weakly... Too much hype, as we already knew

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Bekkali, Soukayna, George J. Youssef, Peter H. Donaldson, Natalia Albein-Urios, Christian Hyde, and Peter G. Enticott. 2019. “Is the Putativ...

People have a tendency to ‘shoot the messenger,’ deeming innocent bearers of bad news unlikeable; it is unique to the (innocent) messenger, & not mere bystanders; & distinct from merely receiving information that one disagrees with

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John, Leslie, Hayley Blunden, and Heidi Liu. "Shooting the Messenger." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (forthcoming). ...

Surprisingly many highly educated individuals are prone to attribute a stage magician's feats to genuine psychic powers, despite knowing of trickery

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From 2018: Magic Performances – When Explained in Psychic Terms by University Students. Lise Lesaffre, Gustav Kuhn, Ahmad Abu-Akel, Déborah ...

54–58% of Google search snippets amplify partisanship, likely because of journalistic practice: It uses terms & quotes from partisan politicians in the introduction (& meta-data) of articles (favored by the summarization algorithm)

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Auditing the Partisanship of Google Search Snippets. Desheng Hu et al. To be presented in THE International World Wide Web Conference 2019. ...

From 2017: Factors involving extramarital affairs among married adults in Bangladesh

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From 2017: Factors involving extramarital affairs among married adults in Bangladesh. Yasmin Jaha et al. International Journal of Community ...

Benefits of zebra stripes: Behaviour of tabanid flies around zebras and horses

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Benefits of zebra stripes: Behaviour of tabanid flies around zebras and horses. Tim Caro et al. PLOS, February 20, 2019. https://doi.org/10....

People are often characterized as poor savers; an attentional asymmetry away from money-saved relative to money-earned, potentially contributes to decreased everyday salience and future wealth

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From 2018: Differential temporal salience of earning and saving. Kesong Hu, Eve De Rosa & Adam K. Anderson. Nature Communications, volum...
Sunday, March 24, 2019

Feeling Alone Among 317 Million Others: Twitter is used to both seek and provide support regarding loneliness; weekend and night-time disclosures are associated with the angriest language

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Feeling Alone Among 317 Million Others: Disclosures of Loneliness on Twitter. JamieMahoney et al. Computers in Human Behavior, MAr 24 2019. ...

From 2018: How Persistent Low Expected Returns Alter Optimal Life Cycle Saving, Investment, and Retirement Behavior

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From 2018: How Persistent Low Expected Returns Alter Optimal Life Cycle Saving, Investment, and Retirement Behavior. Vanya Horneff, Raimond ...

Research suggests more people find suicide a reasonable response to dire challenges... No recommendations about what to do and how.

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The dangerous shifting cultural narratives around suicide. Julie Phillips. Washington Post, Mar 21 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...

From 2018... Nice guys finish last: When and why agreeableness is associated with economic hardship

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Matz, Sandra C., & Gladstone, Joe J. (2018). Nice guys finish last: When and why agreeableness is associated with economic hardship. Jou...
Saturday, March 23, 2019

Why smarter individuals self-report being prosocial and more moral persons? A study on the mediating roles of empathy and moral identity

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Why are smarter individuals more prosocial? A study on the mediating roles of empathy and moral identity. Qingke Guo et al. Intelligence, Vo...

How to define and measure the extent to which human cognition is rational

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Cognitive Success: A Consequentialist Account of Rationality in Cognition. Gerhard Schurz, Ralph Hertwig. Topics in Cognitive Science, Janua...