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Cutting-edge reports on the latest psychology research
Christian Jarrett
607 posts
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- September 22, 2008
- 01:00 AM
- 1,384 views
How ambitious mothers breed successful daughters
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
"I always knew our Karen would do well"... these words, so typical of a proud mother, have taken on profound significance following a new study by Eirini Flouri and Denise Hawkes at the Institute of Education in London. Their research shows that a mother's expectations about about her daughter's future educational attainment may actually affect that child's future success at work, as well as her sense of control in life.Flouri and Hawkes used data collected from 1,520 men and 1,765 women as part........ Read more »
Eirini Flouri, & Denise Hawkes. (2008) Ambitious mothers - successful daughters: Mothers' early expectations for children's education and children's earnings and sense of control in adult life. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 78(3), 411-433. DOI: 10.1348/000709907X251280
- October 13, 2008
- 03:17 AM
- 1,373 views
A personality test that can't be faked
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Aspects of personality can be even more important than IQ when it comes to predicting workplace performance and academic success. If you're conscientious and emotionally stable, you're likely to be a better employee or a more successful student than someone who is lazy and unstable. The trouble for university selectors or company recruiters is that personality tests can be easily faked...until now. Psychologists in Canada think they've found a way to measure the Big Five factors of personality t........ Read more »
J HIRSH, & J PETERSON. (2008) Predicting creativity and academic success with a “Fake-Proof” measure of the Big Five. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(5), 1323-1333. DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2008.04.006
- September 3, 2008
- 03:24 AM
- 1,341 views
We remember more from our teens and early twenties than from any other time of life
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Research shows we're better at recollecting events that occurred during our teens and early twenties than during any other period in our lives - an anomaly that experts call the "reminiscence bump". One explanation for the bump, according to Steve Janssen and colleagues, is that our memories work more efficiently during our teens and early adulthood relative to other periods in our lives.The problem with testing that biological account, however, is that it is possible events are more memorable f........ Read more »
Steve Janssen, Jaap Murre, & Martijn Meeter. (2007) Reminiscence bump in memory for public events. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 20(4), 738-764. DOI: 10.1080/09541440701554409
- April 24, 2009
- 03:47 AM
- 1,326 views
Classroom lighting could be harming pupils' performance
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Lighting conditions in UK classrooms could be needlessly harming children's school performance, psychologists have claimed. Mark Winterbottom and Arnold Wilkins assessed 90 classrooms in 11 secondary schools across the UK during the Summer of 2006.Past research has shown that fluorescent lights that flicker imperceptibly at a rate of 100Hz are harmful to mental performance. They're easily replaced by more efficient and less harmful lights, yet Winterbottom and Wilkins found 20 per cent of classr........ Read more »
Winterbottom, M., & Wilkins, A. (2009) Lighting and discomfort in the classroom. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29(1), 63-75. DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2008.11.007
- September 24, 2008
- 01:00 AM
- 1,290 views
What does crying do for you?
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Nearly all of us cry sometimes. But what makes us cry, how often we do it, and how it makes us feel varies hugely from person to person. According to Jonathan Rottenberg and colleagues, crying in general, and particularly how crying makes us feel, are surprisingly under-researched aspects of human behaviour.Rottenberg's team asked 196 adult Dutch women (aged between 17 and 84 years) to answer questions about their personalities, their mental health, their propensity for crying and how crying mad........ Read more »
J ROTTENBERG, L BYLSMA, V WOLVIN, & A VINGERHOETS. (2008) Tears of sorrow, tears of joy: An individual differences approach to crying in Dutch females. Personality and Individual Differences, 45(5), 367-372. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2008.05.006
- October 17, 2008
- 01:00 AM
- 1,272 views
When thoughts of death turn to environmentalism
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Reminding people of their own mortality can either turn them off environmentalism or reinforce their commitment to it, depending on how important the cause was to them in the first place. That's according to Matthew Vess and Jamie Arndt who asked 57 students to think about what will happen when they die, or to imagine physical pain (this served as a non-morbid control condition).After completing an irrelevant distraction task, the students next read an article about a lawsuit concerning a city c........ Read more »
M VESS, & J ARNDT. (2008) The nature of death and the death of nature: The impact of mortality salience on environmental concern. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(5), 1376-1380. DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2008.04.007
- October 22, 2008
- 01:00 AM
- 1,255 views
Self-belief boosts problem solving success
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Success at mental arithmetic isn't purely a question of mathematical skill and knowledge - people's belief in their own ability, known as "self-efficacy", plays a key part too. Bobby Hoffman and Alexandru Spatariu who made the new finding say their research is the "first study that we know of to demonstrate the effect of self-efficacy on problem-solving efficiency when controlling for background knowledge."Hoffman and Spatariu tested the basic addition and multiplication abilities of 81 undergra........ Read more »
B HOFFMAN, & A SPATARIU. (2008) The influence of self-efficacy and metacognitive prompting on math problem-solving efficiency. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 33(4), 875-893. DOI: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2007.07.002
- February 18, 2008
- 06:02 AM
- 1,252 views
Alzheimer's patients retain their taste in art
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
As Alzheimer's disease wipes out a person's identity, their taste in art can remain stubbornly, wonderfully, intact. Andrea Halpern and colleagues hope their finding will bring encouragement to carers of people with the disease.Seventeen healthy older adults and sixteen older adults with probable Alzheimer's disease were asked to place three sets of eight art post-cards in order of preference. One set depicted representational paintings (e.g. Hopper's People in the Sun), anot........ Read more »
A HALPERN. (2008) “I Know What I Like”: Stability of aesthetic preference in alzheimer’s patients☆. Brain and Cognition, 66(1), 65-72. DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2007.05.008
- November 26, 2008
- 12:00 AM
- 1,251 views
We're better at spotting fake smiles when we're feeling rejected
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
The last thing you need if you're feeling rejected is to waste time pursuing friendships with people who aren't genuinely interested. That's according to Michael Bernstein and his colleagues, who say we've actually evolved a perceptual adaptation to rejection that helps prevent this from happening.Bernstein's team provoked feelings of rejection in students by asking them to write about a time they felt rejected or excluded. These students were subsequently better at distinguishing fake from real........ Read more »
Michael J. Bernstein, Steven G. Young, Christina M. Brown, Donald F. Sacco, & Heather M. Claypool. (2008) Adaptive Responses to Social Exclusion: Social Rejection Improves Detection of Real and Fake Smiles. Psychological Science, 19(10), 981-983. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02187.x
- October 29, 2008
- 05:23 AM
- 1,245 views
Are brain damaged people who confabulate even trying to remember?
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
When a patient with brain damage provides bizarre answers to questions about their life or their recent activities, they are said to be confabulating. It's nearly always associated with damage to the frontal cortex and has traditionally be construed as a problem with memory retrieval - a mixing up of real memories with imagined facts. But now Gian Zannino and his associates have proposed a new explanation. Their suggestion is that confabulation often doesn't involve memory at all. Rather, they s........ Read more »
Gian Daniele Zannino, Francesco Barban, Carlo Caltagirone, & Giovanni Carlesimo. (2008) Do confabulators really try to remember when they confabulate? A case report. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 25(6), 831-852. DOI: 10.1080/02643290802365078
- February 5, 2008
- 06:05 AM
- 1,234 views
Sprinters should kick-off with their right foot
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
All sprinters should start with their right foot in the rear kick-off position on the starting block. Doing so will give them an advantage of about 80ms compared with starting with their left foot in that position. That's according to Adam Eikenberry and colleagues who say the effect of foot position on starting time has to do with differences in the workings of the left and right brain hemispheres.Ten experienced and ten novice sprinters were timed as they repeatedly launched into a sprint........ Read more »
A EIKENBERRY. (2008) Starting with the “right” foot minimizes sprint start time. Acta Psychologica, 127(2), 495-500. DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2007.09.002
- May 12, 2009
- 05:59 PM
- 1,221 views
Do professional movie critics evaluate films the same way as the rest of us?
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
If you want to know whether you're going to enjoy a movie, the opinion of professional film critics might not be the best place to find out. Jonathan Plucker and colleagues compared the ratings given to films by professional critics, "amateur critics", and undergrad students, and discovered a continuum of overlapping opinion with the experts being the harshest judges, followed by the amateur critics, while the students were the most generous.A further finding to emerge was that undergrads who'd ........ Read more »
Plucker, J., Kaufman, J., Temple, J., & Qian, M. (2009) Do experts and novices evaluate movies the same way?. Psychology and Marketing, 26(5), 470-478. DOI: 10.1002/mar.20283
- February 1, 2008
- 05:05 AM
- 1,207 views
The type of interrogation likely to lead to false confessions
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Not surprisingly, confessions are extremely persuasive in court, but according to Jessica Klaver and colleagues, all too often these confessions are false, leading to the wrong person being found guilty.Now Klaver's team have used an elegant laboratory task to compare two types of interrogation technique and found that it is so-called 'minimising' questions and remarks - those that downplay the seriousness of the offence, and which blame other people or circumstances - that are th........ Read more »
Jessica Klaver, Zina Lee, & V Gordon Rose. (2008) Effects of personality, interrogation techniques and plausibility in an experimental false confession paradigm. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 13(1), 71-88. DOI: 10.1348/135532507X193051
- June 20, 2008
- 05:03 AM
- 1,206 views
Biofeedback training can boost concentration power
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Psychologists have developed a form of training, involving biofeedback, that can boost people's ability to concentrate. The system shows potential as a way to help people with ADHD (i.e an attention deficit). The work was inspired by research showing that brain areas involved in arousal overlap with those involved in sustained attention.Participants were first tested on a boring concentration task, during which single numbers between 1 and 9 appeared on a computer screen hundreds of times. ........ Read more »
R OCONNELL, M BELLGROVE, P DOCKREE, A LAU, M FITZGERALD, & I ROBERTSON. (2008) Self-Alert Training: Volitional modulation of autonomic arousal improves sustained attention. Neuropsychologia, 46(5), 1379-1390. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.12.018
- September 10, 2008
- 04:52 AM
- 1,191 views
Why female business owners are less successful but just as satisfied
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
The proportion of businesses owned by women is on the increase in many countries. These female-run firms tend to be less successful in financial terms than businesses run by men, and yet limited evidence suggests female business owners are just as satisfied with their careers as their male counterparts - a phenomenon dubbed: "the paradox of the contented female business owner".Gary Powell and Kimberly Eddleston surveyed 201 business owners in America (43 per cent were female) and found fresh evi........ Read more »
G POWELL, & K EDDLESTON. (2008) The paradox of the contented female business owner☆. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 73(1), 24-36. DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2007.12.005
- March 2, 2009
- 12:00 AM
- 1,189 views
Txtng associated wiv superior reading skills
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
"It is the relentless onward march of the texters, the SMS vandals who are doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours eight hundred years ago. They are destroying it: pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary. And they must be stopped." John Humphreys, writing in the Daily Mail.The growing use of mobile phones to send text messages, often with abbreviations and symbols (i.e. "textisms"), has been blamed by many for the alleged decline in correct ........ Read more »
Beverly Plester, Clare Wood, & Puja Joshi. (2009) Exploring the relationship between children's knowledge of text message abbreviations and school literacy outcomes. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 27(1), 145-161. DOI: 10.1348/026151008X320507
- September 29, 2008
- 05:13 AM
- 1,183 views
Practice, practice, practice ... the benefits are ongoing
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Whether you're talking about sport, chess or music, a surfeit of research has shown that the best performing experts practice more than their less able colleagues.What's unclear is whether the benefits of this practice are ongoing throughout a person's career and secondly, whether the benefits of practice vary with a person's level of skill. Are the most elite performers of such a high standard because of all the practice they do, or is it because of their superior talent that this practice is b........ Read more »
Anique B., Niels Smits, Remy, M., J., P. Rikers, & Henk G. Schmidt. (2008) Deliberate practice predicts performance over time in adolescent chess players and drop-outs: A linear mixed models analysis. British Journal of Psychology. DOI: 10.1348/000712608X295631
- August 20, 2008
- 03:00 AM
- 1,179 views
Negative false memories are more easily implanted in children's minds than neutral ones
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Children develop false memories for a negative event more readily than they do for a neutral one. Henry Otgaar and colleagues, who made the new finding, said their work has real world implications for anyone working with child witnesses: "The argument that is sometimes heard in court - i.e. this memory report must be true because it describes such a horrible event - is, as our data show, on shaky grounds."Seventy-six children aged between seven and nine years were asked to recall details about a........ Read more »
H OTGAAR, I CANDEL, & H MERCKELBACH. (2008) Children’s false memories: Easier to elicit for a negative than for a neutral event. Acta Psychologica, 128(2), 350-354. DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2008.03.009
- September 15, 2008
- 01:00 AM
- 1,179 views
Background TV disrupts children's play
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
It's a rainy afternoon, there's a TV quiz show jabbering in the background, a young child plays sweetly with her toys, and Mum (or Dad) flicks idly through the newspaper - what could be wrong with this domestic scene? According to Marie Schmidt and colleagues, the background TV could well be disrupting the child's play, which in turn could have a negative impact on her cognitive development.Fifty children aged between one and three years were videoed playing in a room for an hour while their mot........ Read more »
Marie Evans Schmidt, Tiffany A. Pempek, Heather L. Kirkorian, Anne Frankenfield Lund, & Daniel R. Anderson. (2008) The Effects of Background Television on the Toy Play Behavior of Very Young Children. Child Development, 79(4), 1137-1151. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01180.x
- March 30, 2009
- 03:37 PM
- 1,172 views
Women really are better than men at processing faces
by Christian Jarrett in BPS Research Digest
Often, if a film features two characters who look vaguely similar - for instance both are tall, dark-haired, middle-aged men - I will find myself confusing the two, as I struggle to form a distinct impression of each of their faces. Maybe it's to do with the fact I'm male. New research by Ryan McBain has built on previous, more equivocal studies by showing that women are better than men at spotting a face in a display, and better at distinguishing between faces.In an initial experiment, 35 women........ Read more »
R MCBAIN, D NORTON, & Y CHEN. (2009) Females excel at basic face perception. Acta Psychologica, 130(2), 168-173. DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2008.12.005
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