… Not only are false, or mistaken, memories common in normal life, but researchers have found it relatively easy to generate false memories of words and images in human subjects. But exactly what goes on in the brain when mistaken memories are formed has remained mysterious. Now scientists at the […] Read more »
This Is Your Brain on Power
The powerful people of the world look down upon the powerless. … A decade of research on power and behavior show there are some predictable ways people react to power, which can be simply defined as the ability to influence others. While power in governments and across the world can come […] Read more »
Do You Wanna Know a Secret?
The revelation that the National Security Agency has been secretly amassing huge amounts of data about Americans’ phone and Internet use has sparked a lively debate about the proper role of secret information in a free and open society. … But there is a major problem with evaluating information labeled […] Read more »
Republicans and Democrats Treat Fracking Like It’s Global Warming
The more liberals and conservatives know about science, the more they have wildly variant views about the risks of global warming, according to research by Yale’s Dan Kahan. You might call it the “smart idiot” effect—knowledge, itself, seems to make people with diametrically opposed views more sure that they’re right, […] Read more »
From global warming to fluoride: Why do people deny science?
… Many approaches have been taken to try to convince individual citizens to take climate change seriously. These include the arguments that we have an ethical and moral obligation to the less fortunate on the planet and to future generations, that we are conducting a risky experiment with the planet, […] Read more »
Does Gomez Have a Real Chance in Massachusetts?
A common cognitive bias in political analysis is what Daniel Kahneman calls the availability heuristic: the tendency to focus on recent or familiar examples as opposed to the broader course of history and the richer volume of precedents. There is some risk of this in Massachusetts, where the Democrat Martha […] Read more »