Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2661 )

• Making the World Nicer is a Tough Slog - Two Organizations Trying.

  The end of 2016 approaches, I am thinking about charitable donations I have made or might make in this angry and uncertain time of huge political changes. Read more

  Posted on 26 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Automated Jobless Future.

  Elizabeth Kolbert offers an interesting review of ideas in several recent books dealing with our automated future. How long will it be before you lose your job... Read more

  Posted on 23 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• A Stark Graphic - the Income Gap Continues to Widen.

  

  The NYTimes piece by Patricia Cohen and graphic summaries by Ashkenas are worth reading. The top 1% and the bottom 50% have swapped their relative shares of... Read more

  Posted on 22 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Arthropod Housemates.

  

  Now I know more about what is in the haze of particles I see illuminated by the horizontal rays of the rising sun flowing through my Fort Lauderdale condo in... Read more

  Posted on 21 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Reducing Future Fears by Suppressing Episodic Simulation in the Brain.

  Benoit et al. offer some findings relevant to understanding the heightened anxiety many are feeling in the Age of Trump. An edited summary that starts the... Read more

  Posted on 20 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Can Evolution Have a 'higher Purpose'?

  I want to point to this essay by Robert Wright, author of "The Moral Animal," who makes the point that arguments that life on earth may have some larger... Read more

  Posted on 19 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Political Tribes, and the Psychology of Liberals and Conservatives.

  I am using this post to pass on to MindBlog readers some background material I just sent out to members of a senior current topics discussion group that we... Read more

  Posted on 16 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Bad Things That Happen to Annoyingly Happy People...

  There is abundant evidence that being or appearing to be happy confers lots of advantages in life, both in personal health, relationships and in the workplace. Read more

  Posted on 15 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Why Does Time Fly When You’re Having Fun? Dopamine Neurons…

  Soares et al. find by observing timing behavior in mice that dopaminergic neurons control temporal judgments on a time scale of seconds. Our sense of time is fa... Read more

  Posted on 14 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Feeling Confident That You Know? fMRI Correlates of Metacognitive Accuracy.

  The more confident you are, the less likely you are to be correct! From Molenberghs et al: One important aspect of metacognition is the ability to accurately... Read more

  Posted on 13 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Oxytocin, Moral Judgement, and Male Social Synchony

  I pass on two interesting pieces of work. First, Bernhard et al. show a correlation between different forms of the oxytocin receptor gene (which would... Read more

  Posted on 12 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Exhaustion is Not Unique to Our Overstimulated Age.

  Anna Katharina Schaffner, author of the book "Exhaustion: A History (2016), does a precis of its arguments, Is ours the most exhausting age ever?.. Read more

  Posted on 09 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Rage Against the Elites...

  Roger Cohen, always a perceptive commentator, really nails it in his recent Op-Ed Piece "The Rage of 2016". His closing paragraphs: Western democracies are in... Read more

  Posted on 08 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• We Should Ask Our Elders How Best to Live.

  I want to point to a brief essay by Pillemer in Aeon. His interviews with several thousand people in their 80s and 90s revealed that their common response to... Read more

  Posted on 07 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Protecting and Reactivating Memories

  I want to point to two recent Science Magazine articles on memory. From the magazine's summaries.. Protecting memories from stress It is widely accepted that... Read more

  Posted on 06 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Reversing the Effect of Booze on the Brain.

  Assuming that data on female rats can be extrapolated to humans, a bit of work that makes me feel better about my daily habits of aerobic swimming and a robust... Read more

  Posted on 05 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Brain Adapts to Dishonesty.

  From Garrett et al., some information on neural correlates of what might be going on in Donald Trump's brain.... Dishonesty is an integral part of our social... Read more

  Posted on 02 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Genetic Variants Linked to Education Predict Longevity

  I'll follow yesterday's post on genetic variation and societal outcomes by passing on yet another piece, this one from Marioni et al.: Significance Individuals... Read more

  Posted on 01 December 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• From Molecules to Society.

  From Hill et al.: Highlights •Common SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) explain 21% of social deprivation and 11% of household income •Two loci... Read more

  Posted on 30 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• More Exercise, Less Depression.

  Reynolds points to a number of interesting meta-analyses that pool outcomes from past research involving more than a million men and women to show that regular... Read more

  Posted on 29 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE