The annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society will go under way in a week. The Society is looking forward to seeing you in Vancouver. The program has been available for some time, and there is also a mobile app. The Society is urging everyone who is planning to attend to register online rather than onsite. (My best […]
Think eating is easy? Think again. According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight worldwide in 2016. Of these, over 650 million were obese—a number equivalent to roughly twice the population of the United States. And most of the world’s population lives in countries in which obesity kills more people […]
A basic assumption of human nature is that we all want the greatest reward for the least amount of effort. Take for example the students in my class. Often they apply just enough effort to earn a satisfactory grade (e.g., a low B or high C), while avoiding extra-credit assignments like the plague. But in […]
Are you hungry, yet? How long has it been since you have eaten? Are you cranky and tired? I am as I write this piece. I went on an unexpected food deprivation plan, thanks to a recent trip to Central America. I can’t wait to eat more than toast, applesauce, and bananas again. Food deprivation […]
The own-race bias in face processing is a well-known effect that refers to the fact that people generally find it easier to identify faces of people of their own race. Although the general effect has been known for decades, the source of the bias is not well understood. There are a number of broad explanations […]
What percentage of Americans are Muslim? What percentage of Americans are LGBT individuals? What percentage of Americans are Christian? Think about it and take real guesses. If you are like the average person, your guesses were likely overestimates of the real numbers for the smaller percentages (for Muslims; for LGBT), and underestimates for the larger […]
Harvey, Irma, Jose, … and now Maria. Hurricanes have been wreaking havoc in the tropical and subtropical Atlantic for much of the past few months. Their power and consequences fueled by climate change, we can expect more hurricanes that are followed by the retirement of their names: When a named storm was particularly destructive and […]
Are you feeling 🙂 today? Or perhaps 🙁 ? In the modern digital world, we are all conversant with emoticons and emojis. But when you come across the ? emoji, do you know what it means? According to a new article on the Lisbon Emoji and Emoticon Database (LEED), published in the Psychonomic Society’s journal […]
A computational model of mental processing speed in drivers who are holding a conversation suggests that having a passenger in the car is not a distraction, but it does make us more cautious and slower to make decisions. A reality of living in much of the United States and many other parts of the world […]
Our digital event on the processes of explanation came to a conclusion on Friday. The series of 6 posts covered various aspects of the special issue of the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, guest edited by Andrei Cimpian and Frank Keil, that was dedicated to the psychology of explanations. However, this does not mean that the […]