Can mumbling to yourself improve your memory?
e production effect is the substantial benefit to memory of having studied information aloud as opposed to silently. MacLeod, Gopie, Hourihan, Neary, and Ozubko (2010) have explained this enhancement by suggesting that a word studied aloud acquires a distinctive encoding record and that recollecting this record supports identifying a word studied aloud as “old.” This account was tested using a list discrimination paradigm, where the task is to identify in which of 2 studied lists a target word was presented.…
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Stuffed Animals Can Prevent You From Getting Sick
tting a stuffed dog has positive effects on the immune system: The present study assessed the effect of petting a dog on secretory immunoglobulin A (IgA) levels. 55 college students were randomly assigned to either an experimental group or one of two control groups. Group 1 (n = 19) petted a live dog; Group 2 (n = 17) petted a stuffed dog, while Group 3 (n = 19) simply sat comfortably on a couch. Each participant was exposed to one of the three…
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Does the human mind require meaning?
eing absurdist art makes us experience a heightened need for meaning: The meaning maintenance model asserts that following a meaning threat, people will affirm any meaning frameworks that are available. Three experiments tested (a) whether people affirm alternative meaning frameworks after reading absurdist literature, (b) what role expectations play in determining whether absurdities are threatening, and (c) whether people have a heightened need for meaning following exposure to absurdist art. In Study 1, participants who read an absurd Kafka parable…
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Can a walk improve your memory?
e key finding is that those students who went for a walk before the study period recalled 25 per cent more words correctly compared with students who sat still before the study period. You can read the rest of the post here. Source is the always excellent Christian Jarrett at BPS Research Digest. His new book is The Rough Guide to Psychology. Join over 180,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: A Navy SEAL Explains 8 Secrets To Grit And Resilience New…
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Do straight-A students live longer?
a the New York Times: The findings come from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which has been following more than 10,000 people who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957. Those students who finished in the top 25 percent of their high school class were healthier, decades later, than the ones who finished in the bottom quarter. When they were all in their early 60s, those who had finished in the top quartile were, over all, half as likely to have experienced…
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Can taking a shower make you less moralistic?
eories of moral judgment have long emphasized reasoning and conscious thought while downplaying the role of intuitive and contextual influences. However, recent research has demonstrated that incidental feelings of disgust can influence moral judgments and make them more severe. This study involved two experiments demonstrating that the reverse effect can occur when the notion of physical purity is made salient, thus making moral judgments less severe. After having the cognitive concept of cleanliness activated (Experiment 1) or after physically cleansing…
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Is being a criminal hereditary?
idence is brought together to indicate that much criminality can be traced to environmental factors, but findings from family studies, twin studies, and adoption studies indicate that hereditary factors are also implicated in criminality. It is not a single genotype that provides the thrust toward crime, but a variety of phenotypical characteristics that are heritable in more or lesser degree. Such findings shall lead us to rethink our legal responsibility regarding criminals, their proper classification and treatment, and their responsibility…
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Are narcissists happier?
ung narcissists might be: Previous studies have noted that narcissists do, in some cases, experience benefits. The current study adds to this discussion by examining whether age might moderate the links between narcissism and a self-reported benefit (life satisfaction) and an observer-reported benefit (observer ratings of personality). In a sample of college students and their family members (N = 807), the authors demonstrate that narcissism positively correlates with life satisfaction for adolescents and emerging adults, but not for adult participants. In…
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