Conspiracy Theories Are More “Entertaining” Than The Truth — And This Helps Explain Why People Believe Them
By Emma Young Conspiracy theories stoke anxiety and uncertainty and can even threaten the health of those who espouse them. Take Covid-19 anti-vaxxers, for example, who put themselves at risk by refusing a vaccine. So given those negative consequences, it’s surprising that conspiracy theories are so prolific. Research shows that beliefs that other groups are colluding secretly to pursue malevolent goals (the definition of a conspiracy theory) are more common during times of crisis — like a global pandemic. Heightened anxiety is thought to lead people to (erroneously) believe that there are hostile forces at ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 20, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Cognition Media Source Type: blogs

Older People Are More Likely To Avoid Finding Out Information Like Genetic Disease Risk Or Spousal Infidelity
By Emma Young If proof of the existence or otherwise of a god-like deity was available, would you want to see it? What if you had access to a file that revealed whether your partner had ever been unfaithful? And would you take a new genetic test that would indicate whether you have a mutation linked to an incurable disease? “All men, by nature, desire to know,” wrote Aristotle, more than 2,000 years ago. In fact, as the authors of a new paper in Psychology and Aging point out, philosophers have long viewed people as having a thirst for knowledge, and a drive to resolve uncertainty. However, as Ralph Hert...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 19, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Decision making Developmental Source Type: blogs

When Bosses Are Respectful, Young People Are More Resilient At Work And Enjoy Their Jobs More
By Emily Reynolds From ball pits to free beers, fun job perks have received plenty of press attention over the last few years. For millennials, such benefits should surely be appealing — they are, after all, the generation these perks were ostensibly designed for. But according to a new study, young people themselves have a different priority in the workplace — respect. Writing in the International Journal of Business Communication, a team led by Danielle LaGree from Kansas State University finds that being valued and respected by managers was the key factor in employees’ ability to positively adapt to the wor...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 18, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Occupational Social Source Type: blogs

Excessive “Mirroring” Could Explain Why People With Misophonia React Strongly To Sounds Of Chewing Or Drinking
By Emma Young No one likes the sound of someone else chewing or drinking. But for some people, it’s enough to cause overwhelming feelings of anger or disgust — and in some cases, send them into a violent rage. People with “misophonia” (literally a hatred of sounds) over-react to some common everyday “trigger sounds” — typically, sounds made by another person. Though the phenomenon has been well documented, exactly what causes it hasn’t been clear. Now a new paper in the Journal of Neuroscience provides a compelling explanation: that misophonia isn’t related to hearing so much as to...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 17, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Brain Perception Source Type: blogs

Episode 27: The Psychologist Presents … At Latitude Festival 2021 — Child Food Poverty
This is Episode 27 of PsychCrunch, the podcast from the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, sponsored by Routledge Psychology. Download here. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/psychcrunch/20210811_PsychCrunch_Ep27_v1.mp3 At Latitude Festival in Suffolk in July, The Psychologist Editor Dr Jon Sutton hosted a conversation in The Listening Post with Greta Defeyter, Professor of Developmental Psychology and founder and Director of the “Healthy Living” Lab at Northumbria University. An expert on food insecurity, social injustice, school feeding programmes and holiday hunger, Professor D...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 16, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Developmental Eating Podcast Source Type: blogs

Let The Children Play: Research On The Importance Of Play, Digested
By Emma Young As children head back to school, teachers and parents will of course be concerned about kids catching up on their education after the Covid-19 lockdowns. But, as many psychologists have pointed out, they need to catch up on play, too. So what does the research tell us about the need for and the importance of play? First: why do kids need to play? Well, of course, it’s fun — and as we all know, having fun is critical for kids’ psychological wellbeing. But there are also all kinds of documented developmental benefits. For example, play helps children learn how to interact successfully with o...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 13, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Coronavirus Developmental Educational Feature Source Type: blogs

We All Use Our Phones Differently — So General Measures Of “Screen Time” Are Not Very Useful
By Emily Reynolds The impact of technology on young people is an oft-debated topic in the media. Is increased screen time having a serious impact on their mental health? Or have we over-exaggerated the level of risk young people face due to their use of tech? According to a new study, published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, we could be asking the wrong questions. A team led by Nastasia Griffioen at Radboud University Nijmegen suggests that rather than looking at screen time in a binary way, researchers should explore the nuances of smartphone use: how young people are using their phones, rather t...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 12, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Facebook Mental health Technology Twitter Source Type: blogs

Here ’s Why We Believe That Beautiful Animals Are More Deserving Of Our Protection
By Emma Young Do you think a ladybird is more beautiful than a locust? If you do, you probably also feel that the ladybird is “purer” than the locust, and this leads you to believe that it possesses more inherent moral worth. This, at least, is the conclusion of a new paper that inextricably links perceptions of purity, beauty, and moral standing for people as well as animals, and even landscapes and buildings. Earlier studies have found that the more we feel an entity has a mind, and is capable of sensations and feelings, the greater its moral standing — that is, we think that there is a stronger ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 11, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Aesthetics Morality Source Type: blogs

People Who Trust Science Are Less Likely To Fall For Misinformation — Unless It Sounds Sciencey
By Matthew Warren “Trust in the science” is the kind of refrain commonly uttered by well-meaning individuals looking to promote positive, scientifically-backed change, such as encouraging action against climate change or improving uptake of vaccines. The hope is that if people are encouraged to trust science, they will not be duped by those who are promoting the opposite agenda — one which often flies in the face of scientific evidence. But are people actually less likely to fall for misinformation when they have trust in science? Yes and no, according to a new a study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psy...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 10, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Cognition Source Type: blogs

“Service With A Smile” Requirement And Reliance On Tips Puts Workers At Risk Of Sexual Harassment
By Emily Reynolds “Service with a smile” — having a friendly, cheerful demeanor when working with customers in retail or hospitality — has long been identified as having a negative impact on worker wellbeing. One 2019 study, for example, found that “faking it” was of significant detriment to service workers, whilst the term “emotional labour” was first used by sociologists to describe jobs which require workers to display positive emotions. And when this requirement to provide service with a smile is combined with a reliance on tips for income, there can be horrible consequences, a new study...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 9, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Occupational Source Type: blogs

Making Excuses And Panic Buying: The Week ’s Best Psychology Links
Our weekly round-up of the best psychology coverage from elsewhere on the web When you decline an invitation to do something with a friend, it’s better to blame a lack of money than a lack of time, according to researchers Grant Donnelly and Ashley Whillians at The Conversation. The pair found that participants felt less close to, and less trusting of, people who said they didn’t have time to come to a social occasion like a wedding or a dinner, compared to those who said they couldn’t afford to attend. Early last year, when the country suddenly realised it was on the brink of a major pandemic, many peo...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 6, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Weekly links Source Type: blogs

Preschool Children Choose To Learn About Topics Where There Are Gaps In Their Knowledge They Want To Fill
By Emily Reynolds The world is full of fascinating opportunities to learn. But with so many different topics for children to explore, why do they pick certain paths? In a new paper in Psychological Science, a team from Rutgers University looks closely at what drives children’s curiosity. They find that children are motivated to learn more about a topic when there is a gap in their knowledge that they want to fill. The results suggest that for young children there is a sweet spot for learning, when they already know enough to find a topic interesting, but not so much that it becomes boring. In the first study, ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 5, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Developmental Educational Source Type: blogs

Around The World, People Co-operate More Willingly With Others From Their Own Country
By Matthew Warren Many of the world’s most pressing problems require global co-operation. If we are to combat climate change or contain the spread of devastating diseases, for instance, we need to work across borders and share resources. So a new study in Nature Communications doesn’t make for encouraging reading. Using a common paradigm for studying co-operation, Angelo Romano from the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods and colleagues look at how more than 18,000 participants from 42 different countries co-operate with people from their own nation and elsewhere. They find that in every single...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 4, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Cross-cultural Political Social Source Type: blogs

Episode 26: How Has The Covid-19 Pandemic Affected Our Mental Health?
This is Episode 26 of PsychCrunch, the podcast from the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, sponsored by Routledge Psychology. Download here. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/psychcrunch/PsychCrunch_Ep26.mp3 What impact has the pandemic had on people’s mental health? In this episode, our presenter Ginny Smith talks to researchers who have been conducting work throughout the pandemic to understand the toll that it has taken on our wellbeing. Ginny learns about the different factors that can make us more or less vulnerable to these effects, finds out how pregnant women...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 3, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Coronavirus Health Mental health Podcast Source Type: blogs

We ’re More Willing To Engage With Sexists If We Think They Are Intelligent
By Emily Reynolds For many readers, the idea of interacting with an overtly sexist person probably doesn’t sound particularly appealing — yet in many instances we do continue to engage with those who espouse sexist views. A new study, authored by Elena Agadullina from Russia’s National Research University Higher School of Economics, finds one factor that could determine whether we are likely to want to interact with a perpetrator of sexism: their intelligence. Participants preferred to interact with intelligent people — even those who had engaged in sexist behaviour. Participants, 348 Russian students, w...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 2, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Intelligence Misogyny Social Source Type: blogs