Psychology

Credit: CC0 Public Domain It's late November, which means the holiday sales period has well and truly begun. If you haven't already seen your spending go up, the possibility is looming. And you probably have some concerns about spending your money wisely. Furthermore, shopping can be a harrowing experience, and our attitudes towards…

Sydney, November 24 It’s late November, which means the holiday sales period has well and truly begun. If you haven’t already seen your spending go up, the possibility is looming. And you probably have some concerns about spending your money wisely. Furthermore, shopping can be a harrowing experience, and our attitudes towards money are tied up in all kinds of feelings. Based on psychology, here are three tips to improve the way you spend your hard-earned cash this…

After completing his doctoral studies in social relations at Harvard in 1960, Michael Maccoby drove a rusty Ford to Cuernavaca, Mexico, to help the psychoanalyst and philosopher Erich Fromm conduct research on the motivations of people in farming villages. They worked together for eight years and produced a book, “Social Character in a Mexican Village.” It could have been the prelude to an academic career. Instead, Dr. Maccoby…

Jared Kenworthy (left) and Paul Paulus. Credit: University of Texas at Arlington Two psychology researchers from The University of Texas at Arlington have published a new book about how innovative ideas emerge in individual and group environments. Jared Kenworthy, professor of psychology, and Paul Paulus, dean emeritus and former…

Further evidence of this bias comes from the reaction of the mice when they were first put into learning situations. Before they knew whether the new associations would be positive or negative, the release of neurotensin from their thalamic neurons decreased. The researchers speculate that new stimuli are assigned a more negative valence automatically until their context is more certain and can redeem them.“You’re more responsive to negative experiences versus positive experiences,” Hao Li said. If you almost get hit by a…

Despite being around for more than 100 years, Ouija boards (a wooden board covered with the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0-9, and the words "yes", "no" and "goodbye") continue to be a popular activity – especially around Halloween.To work, all participants must place their hands on the wooden pointer (or planchette) and ask any present "spirits" to answer their questions by moving the planchette around the board to spell out their response.While some see it as a harmless parlor game, others swear by the board's…

A photo of a computer screen running “Real Time Face Detector” software shows visitors’ expressions analyzed and explained in real-time at the stand of the Fraunhofer Institute at the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover on March 6, 2008. The Real Time Face Detector is a software module that can be used for fast face detection in video streams and single pictures.Photo: John MacDougal (Getty Images)The head of the United Kingdom’s independent privacy watchdog worries highly hyped efforts to use AI to detect people’s emotional…

Earlier this month, when Kanye West said he was going to go “death con 3” on Jewish people, many people online and in the media were quick to remind others about the artist’s mental health. West, who is legally known as Ye, has bipolar disorder, and has been open about it and his struggles for years.Wishes online that Ye would get help and comments on social media contextualizing his present comments with his history of both mental illness and intentional provocation have spurred important questions on how to respond to…

“It may be that stimulation of the nucleus accumbens altered the reward circuitry in the brain such that it turned down the volume on the pleasurable craving that patients with alcohol use disorder feel when they see or are around alcoholic beverages,” says Nir Lipsman, the study’s principal investigator and a neurosurgeon at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.Lipsman is hoping to conduct a larger trial to confirm the findings. His group is also interested in finding brain signatures associated with alcohol cravings so…

Credit: Shutterstock More than a few eyebrows were raised at the weekend when it was reported a staggering 433 people won the jackpot of a government-backed lottery in the Philippines—sharing in 236 million pesos (about A$6.2 million). …