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fMRI: “The Wonder Machine”? Common Questions and Misconceptions about fMRI Research
I am a big fan of the guys on the Stuff You Should Know podcast. In case you don’t know them, they give 30-45 minute talks on all sorts of interesting topics, from historical, to scientific, to current events. In quite a few of these podcasts they have brought up research that used fMRI (functional…
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The Economy and Changing Gender Roles
I opened the Atlantic this week to read the cover story, with the subheading “In today’s economy, men are falling apart. What that means for sex and marriage.” The article includes personal anecdotes, historical notes on the history of marriage, sociological examples of on-Western cultures, and theories on marriage and love. Particularly interesting were theories…
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What is a confounding variable?
Whether you’re conducting research, reading about research, or learning research methods so you can ace your research methods course, you need to know exactly what a confounding variable is. If you think you’ve got it, then this isn’t the post for you. But if you’re confounded by the idea of a confound, then this post…
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Media 24/7 Starting in the Womb
Common Sense Media released a study today about media use of children from 0 to 8 years of age. The research is an extension of research originally conducted by Kaiser; the study appears to be quite thorough (for example, this study also contacted people who don’t have landlines and only use cell phones). The last…
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“…the difference between significant and not significant is not itself necessarily significant.”
The quote above comes from a perspective published in Nature Neuroscience this past summer by Nieuwenhuis and colleagues. They detail a surprisingly common mistake in the statistical analyses carried out by some studies published in prominent journals. It might be easier to first illustrate the mistake with an example. Let’s say I give a control…
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Troy Davis: Victim of Eyewitness Testimony
Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed today, charged with murdering a Savannah police officer in 1989. Davis’ execution has been scheduled 4 times, and appealed again and again. The most recent appeal to halt the lethal injection was rejected yesterday and it seems Davis’ attorneys are out of options. The death penalty is a…
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Need to remember something? Try forgetting it!
A friend recently asked me why our lab is called the “Learning and Forgetting Lab.” He pointed out, “I know learning is important, but why would you study forgetting?” That is an excellent question. Most people think of forgetting as a negative occurrence to prevent rather than an adaptive, beneficial function. In fact, forgetting something…
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Know When to Put on Rose-Colored Lenses: When Bias is Useful
The idea of “positive illusions” is one that has been popular in social psychology since Taylor and Brown published their 1988 paper, “Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health.” Simply put, positive illusions are biased perceptions of reality that are thought to be good for mental health. For instance, studies have shown…
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Is the way to a woman’s heart through her funny bone?
Say what you will about the findings in evolutionary psychology—they certainly have good narratives. One of the latest, published in the July issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, uses sexual selection theory to argue that humor is important to men and women in heterosexual romantic contexts, albeit in different ways.