My last post dealt with lying—not an unimportant topic given that around 60% of people lie at least once during a 10-minute conversation. It is therefore perhaps concerning that people are by and large quite poor at detecting deception, including law-enforcement personnel such as members of the CIA, the FBI, NSA, and DEA (to name but a few […]

Strawberries taste great. So does Rogan Josh or falafel, though perhaps not all together at the same time. What does it mean for something to “taste great”? Wikipedia tells us that “Taste is the sensation produced when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste receptor cells located on taste buds.” But is that it? No. […]

Your spacecraft is spiraling out of control and you will hit Planet Zorg unless you quickly fire up the thermal afterboosters. You fumble for the starter button in the tumbling cockpit…. Which of the two buttons below is more likely to allow you to fire up the boosters on time? Would you be more likely […]

We are social beings. As much as we admire the “rugged individualist”, from the Lone Ranger to Crocodile Dundee, in reality most of us are sensitive to the behavior of others around us. We conform to “social norms” on a myriad of occasions: when queueing for the bus, when participating in recycling because our neighbors do, when we do […]

When we read stories, we are transported into magical worlds. That magical world may be another person’s life, a point in the distant past, or it may be a world full of magic and wizardry. One of the most remarkable things we do when we read is to imagine things we cannot ever see or […]

Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid) is currently soccer’s best penalty kicker in La Liga with 35 goals in 37 penalties, which translates to a stunning 94.6% success rate. But really, how hard can it be? With a goal standing eight feet high and eight yards wide just 12 yards away from these professional soccer players, how could one […]

“Magic mirror in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?” Grimm and Grimm (1812) were among the first to note that mirrors do not always provide the perceiver with the desired or expected result. Two centuries later, our methodologies have become vastly more sophisticated but researchers are still fascinated by how people process information in […]

Our partners at FABBS (Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences) have brought to our attention this notice from the US National Institute on Aging. They are updating their strategic plan. If you are an aging researcher (and aren’t we all?), you may want to have some input into that plan. Here is your […]

Ask any chemist and she will tell you that an electron microscope needs to be carefully calibrated.  If not, its measurements are not trustworthy enough for research purposes.  As psychologists, our laboratories typically do not include electron microscopes, but we do employ various measurement devices. At the most basic level, this includes our statistical “machinery.” […]

I meant to write this post last night but then something came up. I had some time set aside this morning, too, but email chewed that up. We all procrastinate, even if only occasionally. In actual fact, I didn’t procrastinate writing this post at all: I thought I was going to work on it tonight, […]