6 Psychology Links For Your Friday The 13th.
I won’t be able to post as much today, as I will be attending the CIMA conference. Here
1. Internal Choices Weaker Than Those Dictated By The Outside World - Via Science Daily – The underlying sense of being in control of our own actions is challenged by new research from UCL (University College London) which demonstrates that the choices we make internally are weak and easily overridden compared to when we are told which choice to make.
2. In Your Brain: A Tug Of War With Every Purchase – Via Dallas News – Consumer spending is in a free-fall: The latest figures show that retail sales fell nearly 3 percent in December, which marks the sixth consecutive month of decline. While the economic downturn might have begun on Wall Street, it will persist until shoppers on Main Street start to open up their wallets, as consumer spending accounts for nearly 70 percent of the American economy. The challenge for policymakers is a daunting one: How do you convince people that now is the time to buy? Fortunately, neuroscience is here to help. A recent experiment, led by researchers at Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon, sheds light on what happens inside the brain when people make shopping decisions. While economists have long assumed that consumers are rational agents and purchase goods based on calculations of utility, that assumption turns out to be false. In reality, every shopping decision is an emotional tug-of-war, as the pleasure of getting something new competes with the pain of spending money.
3. New Happiness Research: Demonstrates When Material Items Are Best Option – Via Science Daily- Past research has shown that opting for shared experiences such as vacations and theatre tickets will lead to more long-term happiness than will buying material goods. However, new research to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Consumer Research shows that sometimes experiences can backfire. The research was co-authored by Leonardo Nicolao and Julie Irwin of the McCombs School of Business and Joseph K. Goodman of Washington University in St. Louis.
4. Big Time Financial Risk Taking Blaming It On Their Genes - Via Science Daily – Financial institutions continue to teeter on the brink of ruin. Banks are still devouring bailout money without loosening credit enough to make a difference in a recession that is sweeping the globe. And everyone keeps asking, “How in the world did so many financial titans take such huge risks with our nation’s well being?” A new Northwestern University study provides provocative insights that relate to, if not answer, that extraordinarily complex question. The study, for the first time, links specific variants of two genes that regulate dopamine and serotonin neurotransmission to risk-taking in financial investment decisions.
5. Conversations With Pioneers Of British Psychology – Via Mind Hacks – The Wellcome History of Medicine Centre has interviewed some of the UK’s cognitive science elders about the early days of neuropsychology and psychiatry research and have put all the video clips online. The interviews are a wonderful insight into the earliest days of cognitive science research which are only hampered by their annoying presentation, so I’ve created YouTube playlists so you can just sit down and just watch each of the interviews from end-to-end.
6. Book Review: Doing With Out Concepts – Via My Mind On Books – Over recent years, the psychology of concepts has been rejuvenated by new work on prototypes, inventive ideas on causal cognition, the development of neo-empiricist theories of concepts, and the inputs of the budding neuropsychology of concepts. But our empirical knowledge about concepts has yet to be organized in a coherent framework. In Doing without Concepts, Edouard Machery argues that the dominant psychological theories of concepts fail to provide such a framework and that drastic conceptual changes are required to make sense of the research on concepts in psychology and neuropsychology.
