Deric Bownds

LATEST ARTICLES ( 2628 )

• The Presidential Election Has Spawned an Effusion of Interesting Essays - a...

  A rich trove of Op-Ed pieces and essays has emerged during the recent presidential campaign. I’ve accumulated a list of links, thinking each article might... Read more

  Posted on 09 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Political Ideology and Pathogen Avoidance Across 30 Nations

  Tyber et al. (a huge number of collaborators) show from a survey across 30 nations that the relatively higher conservatism of people and nations with greater... Read more

  Posted on 08 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• How to Get Beyond Our Tribal Politics.

  Haidt and Iyer offer an essay in The Wall Street Journal that tries to see a way past the tribal animosities that have been dominating our political discourse.... Read more

  Posted on 07 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Facebook Use Associated with a Longer Life?

  From Hobbs et al., with the usual caution that correlations are not causes: Significance People who have stronger social networks live longer. However, can we... Read more

  Posted on 04 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Wikipedia - a Possible Antidote for the Pathologies of the Internet?

  This interesting article by Jeff Guo is worth a read. The early hope that the instant communication offered by the internet would knit society together has... Read more

  Posted on 02 November 2016 SCIENCE

• Social Motion, Social Bonds, and Exercise.

  Davis et al. note how bodies moving in synchrony perform beyond the sum of their individual parts. In two experimental studies, we investigated mechanisms... Read more

  Posted on 02 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Paradoxical Thinking Intervention Can Moderate Attitudes in Violent Times

  

  Hameiri et al. show how attitudes of those participating in one of the most intractable conflicts in the world can be moderated. Read more

  Posted on 01 November 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Questioning the Universality of a Facial Emotional Expression.

  

  Crivelli et al. question the universality of at least one facial expression that has been thought to be the same across all cultures. Read more

  Posted on 31 October 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Lifespan Adversity and Later Adulthood Telomere Length.

  From Puterman et al. (Note...telomeres are protective caps of tandem repeats of nucleotides at the end of DNA strands, whose shortening is involved in cellular... Read more

  Posted on 28 October 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• More Evidence on Exercise Delaying Later Life Dementia

  Suo et al. examine changes in brain anatomy that occur during exercise, the only known antidote to later life dementia. They compare brain changes after 6 month... Read more

  Posted on 27 October 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Men Are More Friendly After Conflict Than Women.

  Interesting stuff from Benenson and Wrangham, whose findings suggest the deep evolutionary history of male bonding. Men affiliate more after one-on-one conflict... Read more

  Posted on 26 October 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Issues Or Identity? Cognitive Foundations of Voter Choice.

  

  This open source article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences by Jenki and Huette is worth a look. I pass on the summary and one figure. Voter choice is one of the... Read more

  Posted on 25 October 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• What Kind of Exercise is Best for the Brain?

  Reynolds points to work by Nokia et al. asking what kind of exercise is most effective in stimulating the generation of new brain cells in the hippocampus,... Read more

  Posted on 24 October 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Most Effective Learning?... Sleep Between Two Practice Sessions

  From Mazza et al.: Both repeated practice and sleep improve long-term retention of information. The assumed common mechanism underlying these effects is memory... Read more

  Posted on 21 October 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• You're Gonna Die....

  

  I live in Fort Lauderdale, an epicenter of life extension companies peddling life extending elixirs. I've tried a few of them, and reported on my experiences... Read more

  Posted on 20 October 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Testosterone in Men is Associated with Status Enhancing Behaviors.

  Seeing this piece by Dreher et al. makes me wonder what Donald Trump's testosterone levels are.... Significance Although in several species of bird and animal,... Read more

  Posted on 19 October 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Brain Basis of Numerical Thinking is Different in Congenitally Blind People.

  Kanjlia et al. show that the absence of visual experience modifies the neural basis of numerical thinking. Brain areas recruited for numerical cognition expand... Read more

  Posted on 18 October 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• 3-year Olds Infer Social Norms from Single Actions.

  Work from Schmidt et al. that is in the same vein as the previous MindBlog post: Human social life depends heavily on social norms that prescribe and proscribe... Read more

  Posted on 17 October 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Our Most Simple Sensory Decisions Show Confirmation Bias.

  Abrahamyan et al. do some fascinating experiments to show that our existing history of making choices, regardless of whether the choices are good or bad ones, i... Read more

  Posted on 14 October 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE

• The Decline of Self, Intimacy, and Friendships

  David Brooks' searing Op-Ed piece is worth a slow read. Some clips: ...In 1985, 10 percent of Americans said they had no one to fully confide in, but by the... Read more

  Posted on 13 October 2016 PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE