Sunday, April 28, 2019

The positivity bias in future thinking serves a self-enhancement function and this bias likely represents a similar underlying motivational mechanism across different domains of future thinking, whether episodic or semantic

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My future is brighter than yours: the positivity bias in episodic future thinking and future self-images. Sinué Salgado, Dorthe Berntsen. Ps...

Exposure to conspiracy theories about Jewish people promotes prejudice which spreads across groups (towards a number of secondary outgroups like Asians, Arabs, Americans, Irish, Australians)

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Exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories promotes prejudice which spreads across groups. Daniel Jolley, Rose Meleady, Karen M. Douglas. Br...

Empirical examination of the replicability of associations between brain structure and psychological variables

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Empirical examination of the replicability of associations between brain structure and psychological variables. Shahrzad Kharabian Masouleh ...

Gérard Araud, french Ambassador to the US, who is retiring: Why should you defend Montenegro? And what Trump is doing with China should have been done before

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The French Ambassador Is Retiring Today. Here’s What He Really Thinks About Washington. Yara Baoumi. The Atlantic, Apr 19 2019. https://www....
Saturday, April 27, 2019

Despite the widespread belief that the moon impacts peoples’ mental health and subsequently psychiatric treatment, this study provides no evidence of our celestial neighbour influence

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Is it the moon? Effects of the lunar cycle on psychiatric admissions, discharges and length of stay. Gupta Rahula, Nolan Daniele R., Bux Don...

People are overconfident about their attractiveness even at high stakes; do not provide honest face-to-face feedback to less attractive participants; and are more honest when feedback is anonymous

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A must lie situation – avoiding giving negative feedback. Uri Gneezy, Christina Gravert, Silvia Saccardo, Franziska Tausche. Games and Econo...

We find statistically significant gaps by race and ethnicity in interest rates, but are exactly offset by differences in discount points; we find no differences in total fees by race or ethnicity

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Bhutta, Neil and Hizmo, Aurel, Do Minorities Pay More for Mortgages? (March 14, 2019). SSRN, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3352876 Abstra...

Neighborhoods in the Philippines pass anti-gossip ordinances

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A Small Town Takes a Stand: It Banned Gossip. James Hookway. Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2019. Neighborhoods in the Philippines pass ant...
Friday, April 26, 2019

People moralize the future more than the past partly to guide their choices & actions, such as by increasing their motivation to restrain selfish impulses & build long-term cooperative relationships with others

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Moral self-judgment is stronger for future than past actions. Hallgeir Sjåstad, Roy F. Baumeister. Motivation and Emotion, Apr 26 2019. http...

Aaron Maté on the Russiagate and the Mueller probe

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New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics. Aaron Maté. The Nation, Dec 28 2018, https://www.t...

From 2018... Self-generated thought: The medial temporal lobe is a key site of thought-generation; the posterior cingulate cortex & inferior parietal lobule have little say

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From 2018: Neural origins of self-generated thought: Insights from intracranial electrical stimulation and recordings in humans. Kieran C.R....

Across different cultures, women’s preferences generally favor the circumcised penis for sexual activity, hygiene, and lower risk of infection

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Morris BJ, Hankins CA, Lumbers ER, et al. Sex and Male Circumcision: Women’s Preferences Across Different Cultures and Countries: A Systemat...

The Social Life of Class Clowns: Class Clown Behavior Is Associated With More Friends, but Also More Aggressive Behavior in the Classroom

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The Social Life of Class Clowns: Class Clown Behavior Is Associated With More Friends, but Also More Aggressive Behavior in the Classroom. L...
Thursday, April 25, 2019

The U.S. saving rate declined by 8 percent between 1980 and 2009; we document that the decline can be explained by rising health expenditures

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Explaining the decline of the US saving rate: The role of health expenditure. Yi Chen, Maurizio Mazzocco, Béla Személy. International Econom...

Greater exposure to “high-achieving” boys decreases the likelihood that girls go on to complete a bachelor's degree, affects negatively their math & science grades, decreases labor force participation

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Girls, Boys, and High Achievers. Angela Cools, Raquel Fernández, Eleonora Patacchini. NBER Working Paper No. 25763, April 2019. https://www....

Homosexual orientation is associated with higher odds of erectile dysfunction and lower odds of premature ejaculation compared with heterosexual orientation

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Barbonetti A, D’Andrea S, Cavallo F, et al. Erectile Dysfunction and Premature Ejaculation in Homosexual and Heterosexual Men: A Systematic ...

Frozen Goals (neither actively working to achieve the goal nor abandon it): 92% reported having at least one frozen goal in their life, thereby demonstrating that frozen goals are not attributable to individual differences

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Davydenko, M., Werner, K. M., & Milyavskaya, M. (2019). Frozen Goals: Identifying and Defining a New Type of Goal. Collabra: Psychology,...

State-owned enterprises concentration in a given sector has a statistically significant negative effect on private fixed capital formation; the impact is stronger in those industries in which SOEs have a more dominant presence

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You Are Suffocating Me! Firm-Level Evidence on Crowding Out. Serhan Cevik. IBM Working Paper No. 19/80, April 24, 2019. https://www.imf.org/...
Wednesday, April 24, 2019

The Two Cultures of Computational Psychiatry ( tools from cognitive science, computational neuroscience, and machine learning)

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The Two Cultures of Computational Psychiatry. Daniel Bennett, Steven M. Silverstein, Yael Niv. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online April 24, 2...