Science of the SpiritS


People 2

Your spouse's voice is easier to hear -- and easier to ignore

Anna Mikulak
Association for Psychological Science
Thu, 29 Aug 2013 17:03 UTC
With so many other competing voices, having a conversation on a bustling subway or at a crowded cocktail party takes a great deal of concentration. New research suggests that the familiar voice of a spouse stands out against other voices, helping to sharpen auditory perception and making it easier to focus on one voice at a time.

"Familiar voices appear to influence the way an auditory 'scene' is perceptually organized," explains lead researcher Ingrid Johnsrude of Queen's University, Canada.

Johnsrude and her colleagues asked married couples, ages 44-79, to record themselves reading scripted instructions out loud. Later, each participant put on a pair of headphones and listened to the recording of his or her spouse as it played simultaneously with a recording of an unfamiliar voice.

On some trials, participants were told to report what their spouse said; on other trials, they were supposed to report what the unfamiliar voice said. The researchers wanted to see whether familiarity would make a difference in how well the participants understood what the target voice was saying.
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Bomb

Men feel worse about themselves when female partners succeed, says new research

Audrey Hamilton
American Psychological Association
Thu, 29 Aug 2013 16:50 UTC
Deep down, men may not bask in the glory of their successful wives or girlfriends. While this is not true of women, men's subconscious self-esteem may be bruised when their spouse or girlfriend excels, says a study published by the American Psychological Association.

It didn't matter if their significant other was an excellent hostess or intelligent, men were more likely to feel subconsciously worse about themselves when their female partner succeeded than when she failed, according to the study published online in the APA Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. However, women's self-esteem was not affected by their male partners' successes or failures, according to the research, which looked at heterosexual Americans and Dutch.

"It makes sense that a man might feel threatened if his girlfriend outperforms him in something they're doing together, such as trying to lose weight," said the study's lead author, Kate Ratliff, PhD, of the University of Florida. "But this research found evidence that men automatically interpret a partner's success as their own failure, even when they're not in direct competition"

Men subconsciously felt worse about themselves when they thought about a time when their female partner thrived in a situation in which they had failed, according to the findings. The researchers studied 896 people in five experiments.
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People

Why do haters have to hate? Newly identified personality trait holds clues

Joseph Diorio
University of Pennsylvania
Mon, 26 Aug 2013 16:39 UTC
New research has uncovered the reason why some people seem to dislike everything while others seem to like everything. Apparently, it's all part of our individual personality - a dimension that researchers have coined "dispositional attitude."

People with a positive dispositional attitude have a strong tendency to like things, whereas people with a negative dispositional attitude have a strong tendency to dislike things, according to research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The journal article, "Attitudes without objects: Evidence for a dispositional attitude, its measurement, and its consequences," was written by Justin Hepler, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Dolores Albarracín, Ph.D., the Martin Fishbein Chair of Communication and Professor of Psychology at Penn.

"The dispositional attitude construct represents a new perspective in which attitudes are not simply a function of the properties of the stimuli under consideration, but are also a function of the properties of the evaluator," wrote the authors. "[For example], at first glance, it may not seem useful to know someone's feelings about architecture when assessing their feelings about health care. After all, health care and architecture are independent stimuli with unique sets of properties, so attitudes toward these objects should also be independent."
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Rose

Decoding the Dream: The most powerful passages from Martin Luther King's famous speech

Drew Hanses
Globe and Mail
Sun, 25 Aug 2013 16:14 UTC
Martin Luther King's famous speech was so powerful because he described a peaceful and racially integrated world completely at odds with reality in the U.S. South at the time. Looking back 50 years later, some context is helpful to understand exactly what he was saying and why it was so revolutionary. It's also instructive to examine both the prepared portion of his 17-minute address - when he argues that full equality requires the removal of economic as well as legal barriers and the poetic "I Have A Dream" refrains, which he added on the spot.

MLK
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Coffee

Researcher finds wealth shapes an ideology of self-interest and entitlement

Eric W. Dolan
PSYPOST
Sun, 25 Aug 2013 13:44 UTC
Climbing the economic ladder can influence basic psychological processes within an individual.

Image
© Gage SkidmoreDonald Trump
According to a new study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin this month, wealth tends to increase a person's sense of entitlement, which in turn can lead to narcissistic behaviors.

Paul Piff of the University of California at Berkeley told PsyPost "there is something about wealth that gives rise to a sense of entitlement, a sense that one deserves more good things in life than others, which in turn gives rise to an increased or inflated sense of self-importance, vanity, grandiosity, and omnipotence (narcissism)."

"Narcissism is a multi-faceted and complex construct, but that wealth is specifically associated with it suggests that as a person's level of privilege rises, that person becomes increasingly self-focused - in a sense, becoming the center of their own world and worldview," he explained.
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People

Mood is influenced by immune cells called to the brain in response to stress


The Ohio State University
Thu, 22 Aug 2013 16:05 UTC
In Animal Study, Immune System Cells in Brain Lead to Anxiety Symptoms.

New research shows that in a dynamic mind-body interaction during the interpretation of prolonged stress, cells from the immune system are recruited to the brain and promote symptoms of anxiety.

The findings, in a mouse model, offer a new explanation of how stress can lead to mood disorders and identify a subset of immune cells, called monocytes, that could be targeted by drugs for treatment of mood disorders.

The Ohio State University research also reveals new ways of thinking about the cellular mechanisms behind the effects of stress, identifying two-way communication from the central nervous system to the periphery - the rest of the body - and back to the central nervous system that ultimately influences behavior.
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People

Anthropologists study the genesis of reciprocity in food sharing

Andrea Estrada
University of California - Santa Barbara
Wed, 21 Aug 2013 15:08 UTC
Image
© Rod RolleThis is Michael Gurven.
When you share your lunch with someone less fortunate or give your friend half of your dessert, does that act of generosity flow from the milk of human kindness, or is it a subconscious strategy to assure reciprocity should you one day find yourself on the other side of the empty plate?

And how do those actions among humans compare to those of our chimpanzee cousins and other nonhuman primates?

Through two separate studies, UC Santa Barbara anthropologists Adrian Jaeggi and Michael Gurven found that reciprocity is similar among monkeys, apes, and humans, even when considering other factors that might otherwise predict helping behavior. However, they also found that only humans showed evidence of reciprocity in food sharing. Their research appears in the current issues of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B and of the journal Evolutionary Anthropology.

"Reciprocity Explains Food Sharing in Humans and Other Primates Independent of Kin Selection and Tolerated Scrounging: A Phylogenetic Meta-Analysis," the Proceedings of the Royal Society B article, compiles quantitative date on cooperative behavior from all existing studies in a number of primate species. "Natural Cooperators: Food Sharing in Humans and Other Primates," the article in Evolutionary Anthropology, goes into greater detail about the origins and maintenance of cooperation among a wide range of primate species, with particular attention to the human case.
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People

Social giving makes us happier

Albert Ang
Inderscience Publishers
Tue, 20 Aug 2013 15:00 UTC
Pro-social spending boosts happiness, especially when spending allows for social connection.

People usually feel good when they make a charitable donation, but they feel even better if they make the donation directly to someone they know or in a way that builds social connection. Research to be published in the International Journal of Happiness and Development investigates for the first time how social connection helps turn generous behavior into positive feelings on the part of the donor.

Lara Aknin of Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, and colleagues at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and Harvard Business School, Massachusetts, USA, wanted to examine when the emotional benefits of giving to charity become manifest. They carried out three studies of charitable donations, or more precisely pro-social spending, and found that spending money on others or giving money to charity leads to the greatest happiness boost when giving fosters social connection. The overarching conclusion is that donors feel happiest if they give to a charity via a friend, relative or social connection rather than simply making an anonymous donation to a worthy cause.
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Music

Odd Hallucination: Woman hears forgotten songs

Megan Gannon
LIveScience
Tue, 20 Aug 2013 12:16 UTC
Woman
© Shutterstock
One night as she lay down to sleep, a 60-year-old woman suddenly started having strange hallucinations. She told her doctors she heard music that seemed like it was playing from a radio at the back of her head.

Within a few months, she was hearing music all the time, with some songs on repeat for up to three weeks. Curiously, she did not recognize many of the tunes that dogged her, but they had full vocals and instrumentals; and when she sang or hummed the melodies for her husband, he identified them as popular songs.

Her experience was described in a case report in Frontiers in Neurology, and researchers say it seems possible that these familiar songs were locked away in her memory and inaccessible, expect during hallucinations.

"To our knowledge, this is the first report of musical hallucinations of non-recognizable songs that were recognized by others in the patient's environment," neurologists Danilo Vitorovic and José Biller of Loyola University Medical Center wrote. "This raises intriguing questions about musical memory, as well as mechanisms of forgetting."
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Info

Willpower is all in your head, study suggests

Tia Ghose
LIveScience
Mon, 19 Aug 2013 14:00 UTC
Willpower
© B Calkins/ShutterstockSome people believe that they need a sugar boost after completing a challenging task.
Willpower may be plentiful - as long as you believe it is.

People who consider willpower a finite resource tend to need a sugar pick-me-up to continue working on a hard task, whereas those who believe willpower is abundant don't, new research suggests. Moreover, nudging people's beliefs about willpower in one direction or the other can influence how they behave.

The findings, published today (Aug. 19) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contradict earlier studies that suggested that willpower is quickly depleted.
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