readings in psychology for april 13th 2011

My daughters Kristin (shown above in 1997 as a first year plebe at West Point) and Karen graduate this year with various advanced degrees and it gives me cause to reflect with some pride. (As one colleague said to me, "I never thought of spawning researchers!")

Here are a few readings for today:

• opinions lead cooperation or not

“The expectations people have about how others will behave play a large role in determining whether people cooperate with each other or not. And moreover that very first expectation, or impression, is hard to change. “This is particularly true when the impression is a negative one,” says Michael Kurschilgen from the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, summarising the key findings of a study in which he and his colleagues Christoph Engel and Sebastian Kube examined the results of so-called public good games. One’s own expectation thereby becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: those who expect people to act selfishly, actually experience uncooperative behaviour from others more often.”

• pigeon study and human face perception

“When it comes to picking a face out of a police lineup, would you guess that you would use some of the same processes a pigeon might use?”

• can alcohol actually help you remember? Yes  it can

“Drinking alcohol primes certain areas of our brain to learn and remember better, says a new study from the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research at The University of Texas at Austin”

• what price would you pay to be thin?

“About one-third of women would trade at least a year of their lives to be thin, according to a study conducted on college campuses in the United Kingdom.

The study, led by the University of the West of England and eating disorder charity The Succeed Foundation, surveyed 320 undergraduate women on college campuses. Sixteen percent said they would trade at most one year, 10 percent said two to five years, 2 percent said 10 years and 1 percent said 21 years or more.”