The COVID-19 crisis has challenged all sectors of society, including science. The crisis demands an all-out scientific response if it is to be mastered with minimal damage. This means that we, as a community of scientists, need to think about how we can adapt to the moment in order to be maximally beneficial. How can […]
So much stuff If there was ever any doubt whether there could be too much of a good thing in science, we are currently witnessing a very clear demonstration of it—both in science in general, and in the behavioral sciences in particular. Stating the obvious: There is just so much COVID-19 related information emerging every […]
Without effective treatment or vaccine, social measures remain at the heart of the world’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. With this, behaviour change remains one of the top three scientific priorities for the coming months, according to the Lancet, and the behavioural sciences are implicated throughout the complex task of bringing societies out of lockdown. […]
Authors: Patrick S. Forscher*, Simine Vazire*, and Farid Anvari* In his 1969 address, former APA president George Miller issued a challenge: psychologists should “give psychology away” by using their science to solve social problems. Miller argued that psychology is relevant to everything that people do, giving it enormous potential to create social good. Yet Miller […]
When it became clear that the world was about to change from the global pandemic, the Psychonomic Society went into action. The Governing Board Chair, Jim Pomerantz, contacted me (I think because I am the Editor-in-Chief of a PS journal, Learning & Behavior) to suggest that we might be able to help stem the spread […]
I’m delighted to kick off this Digital Event called Research in Time of Crisis. This event is the brainchild of Stephan Lewandowsky, the previous Psychonomic Society Digital Content Editor, who approached me with the idea of focusing our Society’s online discussion on research in the time of crisis. Behavioral scientists have a large role to […]
The novel coronavirus spreads through human interactions with people who are infected. Therefore, changing human behavior is a powerful, low cost, immediate intervention to stem the pandemic. The immediacy is critically important as advancements in medical sciences take substantial periods of time before safety and effectiveness can be documented. By contrast, behavioral scientists have amassed […]
Imagine that you’re in the center of a busy city watching a pedestrian traffic signal for your cue to walk. The green walking man gives the go-ahead and you start walking, a police car siren sounds and its emergency vehicle lighting flashes, capturing your attention, and sending you back to the sidewalk as the police […]
TikToks are short videos that typically show a set of movements. Doing the Macarena requires remembering a sequence of movements to make up the dance. Our communications are full of hand gestures and body movements. These “co-speech” hand gestures are meaningful and often relate to the content of our speech. Co-speech gestures enhance the understanding of a listener, help a […]
I met with Annika Boldt and Sam Gilbert (pictured below) to interview them about their paper recently published in the Psychonomic Society journal Cognitive Principles: Research and Implications called “Confidence guides spontaneous cognitive offloading.” When we do something to minimize cognitive demands, we are offloading. This is especially common when we write notes and set alerts, for […]