When a person “doesn’t know right from left”, they are metaphorically confused, or unable to navigate the world. In the non-metaphorical meaning of the phrase, we’re talking about a person whose concepts of right and left are somehow undeveloped – and telling left from right is an ability that we definitely need in order to […]
“Progress is not possible without deviation.” — Frank Zappa The ways by which psychological science deals with methodological problems are many. There are bottom-up approaches such as peer-reviewed papers and workshops given by methodologists who advocate particular types of changes. There are also top-down approaches, such as funding agencies requiring data sharing or journals requiring […]
We are constantly bombarded with a lot more information than we can process at once. We use our attentional abilities to filter out unwanted information and to focus on those things that appear particularly relevant—for example, right now I am trying to ignore all the buzz around me in a Star Alliance lounge at Heathrow […]
You may have heard that the United States had a presidential election last year. You may have also heard that the winner of that election was an outsider, a “straight-talker,” and an anti-establishment candidate. Enough material to fill the Library of Congress has been written on the content of what (first candidate, and now) President […]
Finding an image among other images is a basic task—visual search—has been a staple of the vision scientist’s toolkit for decades. Even if one has no interest in visual search itself, the basic paradigm of searching for a target among an array of images is wonderfully useful for investigating memory, attention, and individual differences. In […]
Have you ever had a conversation with someone, maybe with your spouse, your co-worker, or a student, and based on their response (or lack thereof) you ask yourself, “Did they even hear a word I said?” In the American movie, Rush Hour, the actor Chris Tucker posed the question a different way, “Do you understand […]
Hamburg, Germany, July 2017. The leaders of the 20 most powerful countries in the world gather at the G20 summit to discuss the issues facing our global society. The meeting was hosted by Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, and among the guests were President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The New Statesman reported the excitement […]
One sip, and most of us can tell with near-perfect accuracy whether the wine is red or white. And suppose it’s red, it takes relatively little expertise to know whether it’s a shiraz or a merlot. But judging whether it’s an Australian shiraz or a Chilean shiraz may require considerable expertise. Finally, being able to […]
Since Herb Clark published his famous “Language as a fixed effect fallacy” in 1973, there has been a slow realization that standard techniques, such as ANOVA, are the wrong tools for the jobs that most psychologists tackle. The basic problem is that most psychological questions involve generalization beyond a sample of people and beyond a […]
Today’s cigarette may yield considerable satisfaction to a smoker, although that satisfaction will likely pale in comparison to the disutility arising from that person’s lung cancer in the future. Likewise, today’s Big Mac and extra-large bag of potato chips may gratify the consumer but the long-term consequences—from obesity to diabetes to heart attacks—are unlikely to […]