Here ’s how actors differ in their ability to read their own bodily signals
By Emma Young
How is it that some people can slip into another character so perfectly that they win acting plaudits, while the rest of us struggle to act at all?
Good actors have to convincingly convey a range of emotions. And one way that we feel and control our own emotions is by tuning into bodily signals — such as the more rapid heartbeat that comes with excitement, joy or fear. So, reasoned Peter Sokol-Hessner at the University of Denver and colleagues, perhaps actors are better at sensing these signals — a process known as interoception.
For their study, published in Emotion, the team recruited a t...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - May 11, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Cognition Perception Source Type: blogs
Women candidates are seen as less electable — which makes voters less likely to support them
By Emily Reynolds
Politics in the UK is becoming increasingly diverse. But there is still a way to go. When it comes to gender, the proportion of women in the House of Commons is at an all time high — but at 35%, is still far from representative of the population.
A new study, published in PNAS, looks at the barriers to women being elected. And the Stanford University team finds even voters who would prefer a female candidate show a level of “pragmatic bias”: if they believe that women candidates face barriers that make them less electable, they are less likely to vote for them.
Participants...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - May 11, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Cognition Political Source Type: blogs
Here ’s why phrases like “rowdy bowels” and “moose ooze” seem funny
By Emma Young
Which is funnier:
Sell bargain — or nymph piss?
Roof darkness — or gravy orgy?
Large small — or moose ooze?
If you went for the second each time, you’d be in good company. In a new study, participants gave word pairs in the second set the highest humour ratings, while those in the first languished near the bottom. One very obvious difference is that those in the second set reference sex or bodily excretions, while the others don’t. But Cynthia S. Q. Siew at the National University of Singapore, along with Tomas Engelthaler and Thomas T. Hills at the University of Warwick, also identi...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - May 9, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Language Laughter Source Type: blogs
We unconsciously pay more attention to someone who has dilated pupils
By Emma Young
How do you know when someone else is paying attention to you? If they’re staring at you intensely, that’s a pretty obvious giveaway. But there are also far subtler signals — such as the size of their pupils.
As Clara Colombatto and Brian Scholl at Yale University note in a new paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, our pupils automatically and uncontrollably dilate when we’re emotionally aroused, working something out, or just attending to something. Pupil size has been used as an objective indicator of all these things in a wealth of recent studies.
But if another person ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - May 4, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Perception Social Source Type: blogs
Prejudice among Trump supporters increased after he became president
By Emily Reynolds
Whether or not Donald Trump’s presidency actively increased prejudice or simply emboldened those who already held bigoted views was frequently debated during his term. A new study looks more closely at prejudicial attitudes during the presidency, exploring the views of over 10,000 American citizens.
The study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, finds a complex picture. While prejudicial attitudes decreased among Trump’s opponents, his supporters showed an increase in prejudice — and this seems to be because they believed these views had become more socially acceptable.
First, the res...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - April 29, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Political Source Type: blogs
Extraverts are considered to be poorer listeners
By Emma Young
Extraverts are hugely sociable — they really care about their relationships, and possess outstanding social skills. Well, that’s how extraverts are generally portrayed. But, according to new work, that’s not exactly how other people see them. In a series of studies reported in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Francis J. Flynn at Stanford University, US and colleagues consistently found that more extraverted people are considered to be poorer listeners. Their research also reveals a likely reason why.
There is no academic consensus on what constitutes “good” listenin...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - April 27, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Personality Social Source Type: blogs
Background music can make us less cautious
By Emma Young
Background music is a feature of most people’s everyday lives. Whether it’s while driving, at the gym, at home, or even at work, we often have music playing while we’re doing something else. Research into precisely how this affects our behaviour, emotions and cognitive processes have provided mixed findings, however. One of the reasons, argue Agustín Perez Santangelo at the University of Buenos Aires and colleagues, is there are so many variables, both in terms of the type of music used in the studies, and also the aspects of performance being measured — so it’s no wonder that results have been...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - April 26, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Decision making Music Source Type: blogs
Seeing good people do bad things makes the world feel like a more confusing place
By Emma Young
Have you ever believed someone to be decent — but then they did something morally bad, which turned that belief on its head? It happens more often than we might think. And, according to new work in Social Psychology and Personality Science, the consequences are far-reaching.
In two initial studies, Kate W. Guan and Steven J. Heine at the University of British Columbia recruited online participants who reported having had this type of experience. After reporting details about the event and the perpetrator, participants answered a series of questions about how they felt before, during and after it ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - April 22, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Morality Social Source Type: blogs
Students with Dark Triad traits don ’t feel responsible for their own learning, making them more likely to cheat
By Emma Young
Plagiarism and cheating are persistent problems in higher education, note the authors of a new paper in Personality and Individual Differences. Better ways of combatting academic misconduct are clearly needed. And in their paper, Guy J. Curtis at the University of Western Australia and colleagues report that they’ve found one: encouraging students to take personal responsibility for their own learning.
Recent work has consistently linked various forms of cheating to higher scores on the “Dark Triad” personality traits of psychopathy, Macchiavelianism and narcissism, and also to st...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - April 21, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Educational Personality Source Type: blogs
We tend to prefer political candidates with higher levels of education — here’s why
By Emily Reynolds
What makes us vote for particular candidates often goes beyond their politics. Research has suggested that our voting preferences can be influenced by our own self-identity, candidates’ perceived beauty, and even the depth of their voices. A new study looks at another factor that could sway our choices: education.
Writing in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Jochem van Noord and team find that people with low or high levels of education both prefer more educated politicians — but the reasons for this preference may be different for each group.
In the first study, participants w...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - April 20, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Political Social Source Type: blogs
Moon mission simulation explores how isolation affects astronauts ’ wellbeing
By Matthew Warren
The next decade promises to be an exciting one for space travel. With the Artemis missions, NASA plans to send a crewed mission to the moon in a few years’ time, and will eventually establish a base camp at the lunar South Pole for longer expeditions. Meanwhile, Elon Musk claims that SpaceX will send a crew to Mars in 2029.
But any long-term space mission will face numerous challenges — not just technical, but also psychological. Astronauts will have to spend weeks or months in small confines with just a few fellow crew members, isolated from the rest of humanity. So it will be important to pre...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - April 13, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Mental health Source Type: blogs
Text message “nudges” that initially increased Covid vaccine uptake were not effective later in pandemic
By Matthew Warren
Last year a paper made headlines with the finding that basic text message reminders can increase uptake of the Covid vaccine. In fact, we covered the research right here at Research Digest. As we wrote at the time, the results showed that simple techniques to “nudge” people into taking the vaccine could have a substantial impact if applied across the population.
But according to a new study in Nature, these nudges have a pretty limited shelf-life. The team finds that timing really matters: while text message reminders increased uptake immediately after the vaccine became available, later in the...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - April 8, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Coronavirus Source Type: blogs
What leads people to believe they have been abducted by aliens?
By guest blogger Emma L. Barratt
Alien abduction stories are, at least in the West, relatively common. From as far back as the early 60s, there have been reports of people being stolen away by aliens — typically at night — often for various physics-defying experiments, before being returned home in one piece.
And while stories like these might strike some as delusions that would typically arise from certain mental health issues, studies have found that abductees are no more likely than anyone else to have conditions affecting their perception of reality.
Thanks to psychological research over the past few deca...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - April 6, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Memory Source Type: blogs
Here are the personality traits of the self-made millionaire
By Matthew Warren
“Let me tell you about the very rich,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Rich Boy. “They are different from you and me.”
Fitzgerald’s narrator was referring to the way wealth can shape people’s character — but a new study suggests that people with particular personalities may also be more likely to become wealthy in the first place.
Writing in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, the team finds that millionaires have a unique pattern of personality traits compared to the rest of us — and this is particularly true for millionaires who made their wealth on their ow...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - April 5, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Money Personality Source Type: blogs
People who grew up in cities tend to be worse navigators
By Matthew Warren
The environment in which you grew up can have a long-lasting effect on your navigational skills, according to an analysis of data from nearly 400,000 players of a mobile game.
People who spent their childhood in rural or suburban areas tended to be better at navigating in the game Sea Hero Quest than those who grew up in cities. This difference could be seen decades later, the researchers report in Nature, and was particularly striking in countries where cities are organised in a grid layout.
Antoine Coutrot from the University of Lyon and colleagues looked at data from 397,162 people from 3...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - April 1, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Brain Cognition Source Type: blogs
