Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• Predicting Results of Our Presidential Election.

  I want to pass on an email from retired historian Lou Wangberg, a friend from my Fort Lauderdale period who leads a history discussion group there. He gives... Read more

  Posted on 07 September 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Democracy in the Balance - Special Issue of Science Magazine

  The Sept.4 issue of Science Magazine has a special section of open source perspectives and reviews. A few of the titles: Racial authoritarianism in U.S. Read more

  Posted on 04 September 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Illusion of Objectivity Enhances Political Polarization.

  From Schwalbe et al. (open source): Significance Political polarization increasingly threatens democratic institutions. The belief that “my side” sees the... Read more

  Posted on 03 September 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Mechanisms of Our Current Political Polarization.

  I want to point to three sources that provide complimentary perspectives on the origins and maintenance of the extreme Red versus Blue divide in the U.S. Read more

  Posted on 02 September 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Active Grandparent Hypothesis - an Evolutionary Explanation of Why and How...

  I recommend that you read an interesting article by Daniel Lieberman in the current issue of Harvard Magazine. Here are a few clips: The evidence that... Read more

  Posted on 01 September 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Changes as MindBlog's Autonomic Nervous System Ages 11 Years

  

  Actually, the original title of this MindBlog post on June 11, 2013 was "Changes as an autonomic nervous system ages 11 years - The "Wild Divine" is a bit less... Read more

  Posted on 31 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Reconsidering the Value of Believing in Free Will.

  Nadelhoffer et al. fail to replicate 2008 experiments suggesting that a belief in determinish increases cheating: A key source of support for the view that... Read more

  Posted on 28 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Brief History of Risk

  Li, Hills, and Hertwig do an open access review with the title of this post. From their introductory paragraph: ...First, we examined how the frequency of the... Read more

  Posted on 27 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Getting the Rhythm to Suppress Alzheimer's

  An interesting brief open source review by Lynne Peeples in PNAS describes experiments on mice and humans showing that visual and sound stimulation in the e.e. Read more

  Posted on 26 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Rice-farming Predicts Tigher Social Norms, Less Innovative Thinking, Worldwide

  From Talhelm and English (open source): Data recently published in PNAS mapped out regional differences in the tightness of social norms across China [R. Y. J.... Read more

  Posted on 25 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Stable Isotopes in Hair Reveal Dietary Divergence Related to Socioeconomic Statu...

  From Ehleringer et al.: Carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in hair sampled from 65 communities across the central and intermountain regions of the United... Read more

  Posted on 24 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Gaze Deflection Reveals How Gaze Cueing is Tuned to Extract the Mind Behind the...

  Here is a fascinating bit from Colombatto et al.: Significance We report an empirical study of gaze deflection—a common experience in which you turn to look in ... Read more

  Posted on 21 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Effects of Lockdown on Human Sleep and Chronotype During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  An open source article in Current Biology from Leone et al., the summary: The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many countries imposing a lockdown, which in turn... Read more

  Posted on 20 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Model Shows Herd Immunity to COVID Can Be Achieved at a Population-wide...

  I pass on the editor's summary and the abstract for a open source article by Britton et al.: Heterogeneity and herd immunity In response to severe acute... Read more

  Posted on 19 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Philanthropy—or Tax-exempt Lobbying?

  I pass on this piece by Brad Wible from the Editors' Choice section of the current issue of Science Magazine: Major corporations appear to fund their... Read more

  Posted on 18 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Default-mode Network Contains Nine Subnetworks Serving Different Cognitive...

  Our brains are organized into large networks that can be identified during brain scanning. The default mode network, which has been the subject of many... Read more

  Posted on 17 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Neurobiology of Social Distance

  Bzdok and Dunbar (open source) do a definitive review of evidence that psychosocial embedding in interpersonal relationship is crucial for survival. Read more

  Posted on 14 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Placebos Without Deception Reduce Self-report and Neural Measures of Emotional...

  Interesting work from Guevarra et al. (open source): Several recent studies suggest that placebos administered without deception (i.e. Read more

  Posted on 13 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Personality Dimensions Are Predicted by Cell Phone Usage Data

  From Stachi et al.: Significance Smartphones are sensor-rich computers that can easily be used to collect extensive records of behaviors, posing serious... Read more

  Posted on 12 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Conversational Primes Influence Choices - a Magic Trick Example

  

  From Pailhès and Kuhn: Abstract Past research demonstrates that unconscious primes can affect people’s decisions. However, these free choice priming paradigms... Read more

  Posted on 11 August 2020 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE