Did you meet your partner online? As recently as 2005, few Americans would have answered this question in the affirmative, but according to Pew Research, in 2016 around 15% of Americans reported using online dating sites or mobile dating apps.
Dobby. Dobby did it! We have a new and powerful platform for the Featured Content section of the Psychonomic webpage. The team of elves at TRG (a Hogwarts subsidiary) has worked tirelessly behind the scences to convert all our existing content to the new platform. The chief deputy elf, Ryan Stoeffler, deserves a particular “thank-you” for […]
Get ready to think of some antonyms. Ready? Now fill in the blanks: HOT-C____, SHORT-T_____, and LEFT-R____. Decades of memory research have converged on the strong conclusion that your memory for cold, tall, and right will be better after you generate them in response to the antonym cues than if you had merely read those […]
And the winner is….. in 2014, cognitive scientists from University College London launched an international competition, with a $10,000 prize, to find the best way of tackling a challenge faced by millions every day, namely how best to acquire the vocabulary of a new language. Prof David Shanks and Dr Rosalind Potts from UCL teamed […]
We need to talk about Kevin has been described as masterful. But the film (or book) will probably leave you horrified. And perhaps you will be wondering about psychopathy afterwards. Psychopathy is characterized by “persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, egotistical traits”, according to Wikipedia. People with psychopathy make up 25% […]
Yogi Berra once famously said that “You can observe a lot by watching”. Yogi Berra observed and said a lot of things, but this line has a lot going for it. The idea that information can be gathered by “just looking” entered statistics many decades ago. For example, John Tukey, one of the 20th century’s […]
Music is powerful. It can make our attention turn away from external stimuli and redirect it to our inner thoughts. Sometimes we become so inward-focused after we bring a piece of music to mind, that this “earworm” stays with us long past the point where we’d rather forget that tune. In addition, one of the […]
How long is a piece of string? This proverbial question is not really intended to have an answer. But what about asking which of two strings is longer? That question is well-defined and has a clear answer. In the laboratory we probably would not use strings but we might present lines next to each other […]
We keep track of multiple objects every day. When we drive, we need to keep track of the cyclist near the curb, the dump truck bearing down on us from behind, and the lost tourist in front of us who is signaling turns at random. When we are on the beach on a family outing, […]
The Psychonomic Society underscored its commitment to diversity and equality in three recent posts (here, here, and here). Moreover, the Society is one of more than 160 scientific organizations that signed an open letter to President Trump to protest the Executive Order that bans visitors from a set of 7 predominantly Muslim countries. Those statements […]