Thinking Aloud Can Make You Smarter
w studies have examined the impact of age on reactivity to concurrent think-aloud (TA) verbal reports. An initial study with 30 younger and 31 older adults revealed that thinking aloud improves older adult performance on a short form of the Raven's Matrices (Bors & Stokes, 1998, Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58, p. 382) but did not affect other tasks. In the replication experiment, 30 older adults (mean age = 73.0) performed the Raven's Matrices and three other tasks to replicate…
1 min read
Another way to quickly and easily improve your memory:
ve experiments tested the idea that instructing a witness to close their eyes during retrieval might increase retrieval success. In Experiment 1 participants watched a video, before a cued-recall test for which they were either instructed to close their eyes, or received no-instructions. Eye-closure led to an increase in correct cued-recall, with no increase in incorrect responses. Experiments 2–5 sought to test the generality of this effect over variations in study material (video or live interaction), test format (cued- or…
1 min read
Do the best prostitutes get paid less than average ones?
ven the response to yesterday's post on prostitution I thought I'd dig in to another paper on the subject. The data set came from a website where prostitutes were "reviewed" by johns so most of the sex workers had finely tuned "attractiveness" and "performance" scores. The following made me scratch my head: ...while a unit increase in a worker’s average appearance rating is associated with a 9.2% increase in wages, a similar unit increase in a worker’s average performance rating…
2 minutes
Does merely *thinking* about alcohol increase aggressiveness?
merous studies have shown that alcohol increases aggression. In this article it is proposed that the link between alcohol and aggression is so strong that mere exposure to alcohol-related cues will automatically activate aggressive thoughts and behaviors. Two experiments tested this automaticity theory of alcohol-related aggression. In Experiment 1, participants exposed to alcohol- or weapon-related primes made faster lexical decisions about aggression-related words than did participants exposed to neutral primes. In Experiment 2, participants exposed to alcohol- or aggression-related subliminal…
1 min read
Does having a lot on your mind reduce your ability to experience emotion?
propose that experience of emotion is a mental phenomenon, which requires resources. This hypothesis implies that a concurrent cognitive load diminishes the intensity of feeling since the 2 activities are competing for the same resources. Two sets of experiments tested this hypothesis. The first line of experiments (Experiments 1–4) examined the intensity of participants' feelings as they performed a secondary (backward counting) task. The results showed that the intensity of both negative and positive feelings diminished under a cognitive…
1 min read
Does the type of glass affect how much a bartender pours?
troduction and Aims. Alcohol content in drinks has been shown to be variable. This study evaluates claims regarding the effects of glass size and glass shape on the amount of alcohol served in on-premise drinks. Design and Methods. Wine and spirits drinks were purchased and measured in 80 on-premise establishments in 10 Northern California Counties. Alcohol content was measured as the liquid volume of the drink multiplied by the percentage alcohol by volume of given brands or from analysis of…
2 minutes
How many of your Facebook friends actually influence your behavior?
e success of Internet social networking sites depends on the number and activity levels of their user members. Although users typically have numerous connections to other site members (i.e., “friends”), only a fraction of those so-called friends may actually influence a member's site usage. Because the influence of potentially hundreds of friends needs to be evaluated for each user, inferring precisely who is influential—and, therefore, of managerial interest for advertising targeting and retention efforts—is difficult. The authors develop an approach…
1 min read
An Easy Way To Get More People To Vote, Backed By Research
nd them a text message: Current explanations of effective voter mobilization strategies maintain that turnout increases only when a potential voter is persuaded to participate through increased social connectedness. The connectedness explanation does not take into account, however, that registered voters, by registering, have already signaled their interest in voting. The theory presented in this article predicts that impersonal, noticeable messages can succeed in increasing the likelihood that a registered voter will turn out by reminding the recipient that Election Day…
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