Category: ideas

“The ostensibly trivial act of forgiving can make you healthier and happier, but failing to forgive might pose a danger to your well-being, according to work by [a] Luther College psychology professor and other leaders in the promising interdisciplinary field of forgiveness.”

“The brain evolved to predict, and it does so by identifying patterns. When those patterns break down,” it “gropes for something, anything that makes sense.” In doing so, “it may also turn its attention outward, the researchers argue, and notice, say, a pattern in animal tracks that was previously hidden.”

“[They] understood faith primarily as a practice, rather than as a system – not as ‘something that people thought but something they did.’ Their God was not a being to be defined or a proposition to be tested, but an ultimate [and unknowable] reality to be approached through myth [and] ritual … And their religion was a set of skills, rather than a list of unalterable teachings.”

“Four significant long-term longitudinal studies … have reached similar conclusions: that babies differ according to inborn temperament; that 15 to 20 percent of them will react strongly to novel people or situations; and that strongly reactive babies are more likely to grow up to be anxious.”

“Boosting brain waves can make people move in slow motion. This finding is one of the first to show that brain waves directly influence behaviour, and it could lead to new treatments for Parkinson’s disease and other disorders that affect movement.”

European researchers have found that “some of the chemicals that impart the special toasty, fruity aromas to the beverage are captured by the bubbles and brought to the surface [and thence to the nose] in higher concentrations than in the wine itself.”

“Why don’t pregnant women topple over? Do cows notice kindness? Does cracking your knuckles bring on arthritis? And is there more than one use for a bra? These questions and more inspired the research rewarded at the Ig Nobels, which were handed out on Thursday at Harvard University.”

A research team finds “that older people may exhibit greater prejudice because they have difficulty inhibiting the stereotypes that regularly get activated in all of our brains. They suggested an aging brain is not as effective in suppressing unwanted information – including stereotypes.”

“A diminutive chihuahua and a lumbering Irish wolfhound look completely different, yet most us know they both belong to the concept called ‘dog’. Now the brain regions responsible for our ability to organise the world into separate concepts have been pinpointed.”

“[C]ognitive scientists have begun to see the basic metaphors that we use all the time not just as turns of phrase, but as keys to the structure of thought. By taking these everyday metaphors as literally as possible, psychologists are upending traditional ideas of how we learn, reason, and make sense of the world around us.”