Category Archives: Reasoning

How to jail the innocent

April 14, 2011 – 2:22 am

The Innocence Project has used DNA technology to overturn hundreds of wrongful convictions. Slate has an excellent two part series on the two main reasons why these people were falsely jailed: eyewitness misidentifications and false confessions. The series is by law professor Brandon Garrett who has analysed the first overturned 250 cases to examine the […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Integrating | Comments (2)

Hungry judges less likely to grant parole

April 12, 2011 – 1:36 am

Not Exactly Rocket Science covers a study that is in equal parts delightful and terrifying: it found that judges are much less likely to grant parole when they’re hungry. It’s the work of Shai Denzeger from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and summarises the results of 1,112 parole board hearings in Israeli prisons, over […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Integrating | Comments (2)

The Oscar for best neuroscience research goes to…

April 10, 2011 – 10:35 pm

Both of this year’s lead Oscar winners have published scientific papers on neuroscience. We’ve covered Natalie Portman’s work on frontal lobe development in children before, but it turns out Colin Firth has also just co-authored a study on structural brain differences in people with differing political views. An excellent post on The Neurocritic tells the […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain, Integrating | Comments (10)

Psychosis keeps up with the times

March 28, 2011 – 1:31 am

Delusions in conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have tracked social concerns over the 20th century, according to a wonderful study just published in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry. Psychologists Brooke Cannon and Lorraine Kramer reviewed the patient records of a state psychiatric hospital in the US looking at each decade of the 20th […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Comments (13)

To catch a thief and fool a scientist

March 17, 2011 – 11:56 pm

If you only listen to one radio programme this month, make it this one. The BBC Radio 4 programme Fingerprints on Trial explores how identifying people at crime scenes by their prints is subject to serious psychological biases and is not the exact science that we, and ironically, the forensic fingerprint community, like to believe. […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Integrating | Comments (9)

A victim of metaphor

February 26, 2011 – 1:40 am

A gripping piece from Not Exactly Rocket Science describes how simply changing the metaphors used to describe crime can alter what we think is the best way of tackling it. The article covers a new study on the power of metaphors and how they can influence our beliefs and understanding of what’s being discussed. In […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Hearing and Language, Integrating | Comments (25)

Sniffing out the unconscious

February 19, 2011 – 3:17 am

The illusion that a horse could do maths may be behind sniffer dogs falsely ‘detecting’ illicit substances according to an intriguing study covered by The Economist. The horse in question was called Clever Hans and he was rumoured to be able to do complicated maths, work out the date, spell German words – all from […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Integrating | Comments (14)

A place downtown where the freaks all come around

February 17, 2011 – 12:09 am

Kellogg Insight has a fantastic article on how nightclub bouncers make instant status judgements to decide whether to let people into exclusive clubs. It’s a curious insight into perception of social status that both relies on some social stereotypes and turns others completely on their head. The article is based on the work of sociologist […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Comments (1)

Over-precautionary measures

February 8, 2011 – 12:57 am

I’ve just read a wonderfully revealing article from the Journal of Risk Research that compares the assumptions behind planning for modern-day terrorist attacks and the actual reactions of civilians from the intense bombing raids during World War II. It notes, contrary to popular belief, that both bombing raids and contemporary terrorist attacks rarely cause panic […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Comments (2)

The psychology of the 7 deadly sins

February 5, 2011 – 4:51 pm

The Psychologist has an engrossing article on the psychology behind the ’7 Deadly Sins’ and how they relate to modern life. The piece is full of fascinating and counter-intuitive snapshots from the science of social emotions. For example: Whereas the success and status of others can provoke envy, pride is what we feel when the […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Comments (4)

And I’m telling you you’re dead

January 19, 2011 – 1:37 am

Two delusional patients who believed that friends and relatives had died, despite them being around to prove otherwise, are described in an amazing 2005 journal article from the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. Although the Cotard delusion is well studied in psychiatry, where patients believe themselves to be dead, the report names the novel belief […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Comments (10)

Ted Hughes On Thinking

October 31, 2010 – 6:10 pm

Editor of The Psychologist and man about town, Jon Sutton, just sent me a fantastic monologue by poet Ted Hughes on the experience of thinking. I’ve uploaded the piece to YouTube where you can hear Hughes’ remarkable analysis in his own characteristic voice. The piece is almost nine minutes long but in this part Hughes […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Integrating, Other People | Comments (6)

The power of loss

October 22, 2010 – 10:09 pm

The Frontal Cortex blog has a fantastic piece on ‘loss aversion’ – the cognitive bias where try to we avoid losses more than we try to obtain gains – and its origin in the Allais Paradox. The crucial thing about loss aversion is it is not about just losing things – it’s also about the […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (4)

I’m only racist when I’m drunk

October 12, 2010 – 12:10 am

In the light of several celebrities who have excused racist comments by saying they were drunk, tired or under stress, Time magazine has an excellent article examining how we can indeed become more prejudiced when run-down. Contrary to what some might think, this is not a get-out card for racism but may be key to […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (6)

The unconscious expert

October 11, 2010 – 4:35 pm

Expertise seems to work most effectively in the unconscious mind. An intriguing new study on predicting the outcome of football matches suggests that a period of unconscious thought, at least for experts, is most effective for accurately calling the result. The research was led by Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis and involved asking hundreds of Dutch […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (4)

Language as a thought magnet

August 28, 2010 – 3:23 pm

Today’s New York Times has a wonderful feature article on how language shapes our perception of the world. The infamous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis claimed that our understanding was limited by language and has long been used as an example of a ‘dead theory’ but new evidence is suggesting that certain aspects of a language can indeed […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Hearing and Language | Comments (6)
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