Psychology

Is your computer male or female?

Ships are ‘she,’ people have motherlands and fatherlands, but what about a picture of a baby with the number ‘1’ on it? What about a nice beef stew? Or a chair? Strangely, we tend to assign genders to all of them in a fairly predictable way. Many languages assign masculine and feminine genders to everyday…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Could probiotic yogurt be changing your behavior?

Mice are less anxious when they eat a diet that includes the kind of probiotic yogurt you can buy in the health food sections of most stores. The yogurt includes Lactobacillus rhamnosus, a bacterium that lives in the guts of humans and many other animals, and is believed to contribute to healthy digestion. It also…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Your dinnerware may be sabotaging your diet

Most people make upwards of 250 food-related decisions a day. Sound high? That’s because researchers believe the majority of these decisions are made unconsciously, and that many of our eating habits are actually driven by subtle environmental cues. How we manipulate these cues can have a huge impact on our eating habits. There are two…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Why you shouldn’t challenge a breast-feeding mom to play Call of Duty

When you happen upon a couple of bear cubs in the woods, what’s the first thing that should come to mind? If you answered “I wanna squeeze ’em,” you’re wrong. It should be “where’s the mom?” And with good reason. Numerous non-human mammals are known to exhibit heightened levels of aggression in defense of their…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Study shows that unemployed men don’t mind homemaker roles

The recession has hit everyone hard, but more men than woman are finding themselves without a steady income, and new studies show these men are reevaluating what being a breadwinner means. At research presented at the American Sociological Association’s 106th Annual Meeting, sociologists from Northern Illinois University interviewed laid off men about how they coped…

io9 Tim Barribeau

A test shows that babies can comprehend statistics

There’s no word yet on whether they can also comprehend lies or damned lies, but infants are at least able to understand statistics. As long as there are lollipops involved. A quick test has shown that babies as young as twelve to fourteen months can understand probability, and use it to their advantage. All it…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

What happens when you’re wrongly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease

Psychologists in the Netherlands have documented the case of a 58-year-old woman who was misdiagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. Her condition deteriorated to the point where she became permanently confused, and at one point suicidal — before another doctor realized the diagnosis was incorrect. What happens to people who are wrongly diagnosed with having cognitive difficulties?…

io9 Christian Jarrett - BPS Research Digest

Hysteria over the “grease devil” urban legend is causing riots in Sri Lanka

Over the course of August, Sri Lanka’s countryside has been whipped into a mass hysteria by an urban legend known as “the grease devil.” Rumors of these supernatural prowlers have rural townspeople attacking suspected grease devils, and people are dying as a result. The panic over these nocturnal creatures has gotten so bad that the…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

White American men in rural areas are the most likely to die during dumb macho stunts

Are you a Caucasian male who lives in the countryside? If so, you’re America’s prime demographic to accidentally die during ill-advised, testosterone-fueled stupidity! These findings come courtesy of a recent study in Social Psychological and Personality Science (“Living Dangerously: Culture of Honor, Risk-Taking, and the Nonrandomness of ‘Accidental’ Deaths”) examined which demographic died the most…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

Game theory explains why you’re willing to pay more than a dollar for a dollar

The Dollar Auction shows us how people can become over-obsessed, lose large amounts needlessly, and make the ultimate irrational choice by doing the most rational thing at the time. See the edges of human denial and desparation, for only a dollar. Martin Shubik, and American economist, invented a game, or more precisely a ‘game,’ that…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Why Drinking Purified Poo Water Is So Gross, Even When It Shouldn’t Be

There’s a reason you don’t drink out of the toilet. It’s gross. Even if you got a super toilet that only flushed diamond rain water, it’d still be disgusting. But that’s the thing. The only thing keeping you from drinking cleansed pisswater is you. According to NPR, proposals to reuse sewage and turn it into…

Health Kwame Opam

A soothing voice can change your hormones…but a text message won’t

It’s not always easy to distinguish between human social interactions and the complex chemical interactions that underpin them. Just hearing a calming, familiar voice can alter a person’s hormones in a beneficial way…and technology just gets in the way. That’s the finding of biological anthropologist Leslie Seltzer of the University of Wisconsin. She designed an…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Just why do people get more attractive when you’re drunk?

It’s a fairly well-known idea that people start looking better and better the more one drinks alcohol. But is there actually a scientific reasoning behind this? It might all have to do with a little something called bilateral symmetry. Almost all multicellular organisms exhibit some degree of symmetry – sponges are the only known exception…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Bat on a plane, snake in an MRI tube

Reminiscent, in a general way, of the film Snakes on a Plane, here are two recent (or fairly recent) instances of scary (if you find them scary) animals interacting with humans inside a machine. Bat on a plane: Bat stows away on Delta flight, CDC fears rabies risk to passengers The CDC said the flight…

io9 Marc Abrahams - Improbable Research

New study shows that knowing spoilers doesn’t ruin a story

Many people live in fear of being “spoiled” for a story by finding out the ending. But a new study by psychologists shows that people wound up liking stories better if they’d been told spoilers in advance. UC San Diego psychology researchers Nicholas Christenfeld and Jonathan Leavitt wanted to know whether it was true that…

io9 Annalee Newitz

The psychological profile of roleplaying gamers (as explained by academia)

In the faraway year of 1993, a study in The British Journal of Psychology provided a (somewhat obvious) personality profile of RPG enthusiasts. And guess what? They like to read. From the abstract: Players of a fantasy Play-By-Mail game were compared with matched controls on personality measures of decision-making style, sex-role, extraversion, neuroticism, empathy, leisure…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

Our brains aren’t built to understand altitude

Animal brains, ours included, have evolved to be powerfully aware of where we are at any given moment. But it turns out that our brains are surprisingly, frustratingly two-dimensional, and that we’re only dimly aware of changes in altitude. That’s the finding of new research from University College London. The team studied specific brain cells…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Thatcherization: the art of mutating Margaret Thatcher’s face to mess with the human brain

Thatcherization (or Thatcherisation if you’re English) is the strange way in which people don’t notice massively distorted faces, as long as they’re upside down. Thatcherization received its name when its discoverer, Peter Thompson, demonstrated the phenomenon using a picture of Margaret Thatcher. Humans are built to notice fairly subtle differences in the faces of other…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Is your depression caused by brain inflammation?

It’s possible that depression could be cured by reducing mild swelling in your brain. Neuroscientists have linked depression to brain inflammation before, and now a new study suggests further evidence for this theory. Here you can see the distinctive signature of a glial cell responding to swollen tissue in a brain — the cell’s center…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Saying swear words actually stresses your brain

While there’s nothing quite like reeling off a string of profanities to blow off some steam, our brains might not agree with that sentiment. Saying swear words out loud actually triggers reactions deep in the emotion centers of the brain. That’s the finding of Professor Jeffrey Bowers and Dr. Christopher Pleydell-Pearce, both of the University…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Is your computer male or female?

Could probiotic yogurt be changing your behavior?

Your dinnerware may be sabotaging your diet

Why you shouldn’t challenge a breast-feeding mom to play Call of Duty

Study shows that unemployed men don’t mind homemaker roles

A test shows that babies can comprehend statistics

What happens when you’re wrongly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease

Hysteria over the “grease devil” urban legend is causing riots in Sri Lanka

White American men in rural areas are the most likely to die during dumb macho stunts

Game theory explains why you’re willing to pay more than a dollar for a dollar

Why Drinking Purified Poo Water Is So Gross, Even When It Shouldn’t Be

A soothing voice can change your hormones…but a text message won’t

Just why do people get more attractive when you’re drunk?

Bat on a plane, snake in an MRI tube

New study shows that knowing spoilers doesn’t ruin a story

The psychological profile of roleplaying gamers (as explained by academia)

Our brains aren’t built to understand altitude

Thatcherization: the art of mutating Margaret Thatcher’s face to mess with the human brain

Is your depression caused by brain inflammation?

Saying swear words actually stresses your brain

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