Our Minds Are Black Boxes – Even to Ourselves

Related Links

1. The Cocktail Party Effect
   For psychologists the ‘cocktail party effect’ is our impressive and under-appreciated ability to tune our attention to just one voice from a multitude. At a party when bored with our current conversational partner — and for the compulsive eavesdropper — allowing the aural attention to wander around the room is a handy trick.Perhaps only the [...]
2. ‘Social Networking Increases Cancer Risk’ - I Salute the Debunkers!
   Debunkers, I salute you!When I came across this Daily Mail headline last week…How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer …I simply let out a low moan without bothering to read any further. I assumed it was the usual sensationalist rubbish that frequently passes for the media reporting of science. Nowadays, for good or [...]
3. How to Choose Between Experiential and Material Purchases
   If you decided to spend $100 on your happiness, would you buy something experiential like a meal out or something material like an item of clothing? Research covered here recently suggested that for long-term happiness experiences tend to beat possessions. But Leonardo Nicolao and colleagues at the University of Texas argue in the Journal [...]
4. Leaders Emerge by Talking First and Most Often
   Put some random people in a group, give them a task and soon enough a leader will emerge. What is it about that person that makes others grant them the honour of being in charge? New insight comes from a study published in Personality and Social Psychology, which suggests that leaders emerge through a combination [...]
5. Deaf Signers Feel Words On the Tip of their Fingers
   Memory can be frustrating. No doubt you’ll have experienced the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: when despite knowing a particular word (often a name or place), it just won’t come out of your mouth. But did you know that deaf people using sign language experience this phenomenon, except in their case the word isn’t on the tip-of-the-tongue, but [...]