psychology

Football fandom--psychological diff between Scottish and English


Gooooaaal!

Cheering for your home team evidently solidifies your national identity if you're Scottish, while English tend to see their fan-dom as an individual preference, finds scientist Jackie Abell at Lancaster University.

This sounds like a study my 12 year old nephew would come up with. From the paper..

Support for the England football team is
not necessarily an expression of collective social identity and pride.

Your rating: None Average: 4.5 (2 votes)

Science of Moral Judgement

It's hard to believe there could be an actual physical home for what seems like such an abstract brain process. But, it could be true--morality has an address--1900 Ventromedial Prefrontal cortex street.

Your rating: None Average: 4.5 (2 votes)

Brain implants show what attention looks like


Imagine you're playing a game of basketball--running down the length of the court, your shoes squeaking and you're fingers bouncing the ball about every 2 strides. You're darting left and right, about to sneak under the goal, leap over defenders, and slam it in for 2 points.

The fans cheer in a wave of pure elation. (Admittedly, a creative imagination.)

Your rating: None Average: 4.3 (3 votes)

The Shocking Might of the Telly

Many of us wish that we'd live in a meritocracy, where the experts have the last say and help the society take the right choices. After all, that's part of the reason we love the internet, and the biggest reason why we would like the media to present information and science accurately, and not dumbed down. But believing the data is different than by reason of them being authority.

Your rating: None Average: 5 (1 vote)

We are all pretty WEIRD

I have written before about my disdain for a lot of the pop psychology reported in the press *cough Oliver James*. I am sure that this does not represent a lot of the real research that goes on within the discipline but there does seem to be some fundamental problems within psychology that a few academics are finally shining a light on.

These fundamental problems include the lack of empiricism within the discipline (OK, fancy way of saying you're making it up) which then feeds into implicit universal assumptions about human behaviour.

Your rating: None Average: 4.2 (5 votes)

University of Zurich Takes a Look at Facebook Users, Comes Away Empty-Handed

Scientists are not fundamentally different from other humans in that they follow trends - be they real or perceived. A (more or less recent) trend is Web 2.0, community-driven websites like Facebook, MySpace and the plethora of country-specific look-alikes. So scientists from the University of Zurich took a look at this.

No votes yet

Conversation and the Brain

A great conversation is one of the most satisfying pleasures in life. Some of the best in my recent memory include:

- can we ever completely grasp how big our universe is--with Wayne

- the history of marriage and how love was only recently considered a necessary prerequisite to the endeavor--with Jamie (a reporter heard this conversation and wrote a piece for NPR about the subject)

- both compromise and tolerance are necessary in living with someone, you gotta know when to use each--mom

No votes yet

Waiting for clitoromania

I'm very excited to be guest blogging at The Lay Scientist and have to say its a bit like being in someone else's flat without them being there. I obviously don't do that too often and am just managing to keep myself out of Martin's knicker drawer.

I thought I might start as I mean to go on, by writing about vaginal orgasms. Call me an attention seeker.

I was sent a study from the Journal of Sexual Medicine by the fabulous and recommended Dr Petra Boynton and have to say that, however angry it made me, I will be forever in debt to Prof Stuart Brody for introducing the word 'clitoromania' into my life.

No votes yet

The Psychology of Conspiracy Theorists

ResearchBlogging.org There's no denying that conspiracies occur around the world on a daily basis. From Watergate to the epic tale of BCCI's "full service" bank, plotters and plotting are a fundamental part of human history, and are regularly investigated by researchers, journalists and other parties.

Your rating: None Average: 4 (1 vote)

Wikio - Top BlogsCurrent CO2 level in the atmosphere