all Department of Psychology stories

Face it:

404132862 — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:53:39 -0400

Gay men are most attracted to the most masculine-faced men, while straight men prefer the most feminine-faced women, according to the results of a new study by a Harvard researcher.

The findings suggest that regardless of sexual orientation, men’s brains are wired for attraction to sexually dimorphic faces — those with facial features that are most synonymous with gender.

To tell the truth

404132862 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:25:20 -0400

The rationale behind systemic torture is that pain will make the guilty confess, but a new study by Harvard researchers finds that the pain of torture can make even the innocent appear guilty.

In the study, participants met a woman suspected of cheating to win money. The woman was then “tortured” by having her hand immersed in ice water while study participants listened to the session over an intercom. She never confessed to anything, but the more she suffered, the guiltier she was perceived to be.

Finding the seat of language?

404132862 — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:59:52 -0400

A team of Harvard and University of California, San Diego (UCSD), researchers report having pinpointed an area of the brain where three essential components of language — word identification, grammar, and word pronunciation — are processed.

Ned T.

Neuroimaging suggests truthfulness requires no act of will for honest people

404132862 — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:28:42 -0400

A new study of the cognitive processes involved with honesty suggests that truthfulness depends more on absence of temptation than active resistance to temptation.

Using neuroimaging, psychologists looked at the brain activity of people given the chance to gain money dishonestly by lying and found that honest people showed no additional neural activity when telling the truth, implying that extra cognitive processes were not necessary to choose honesty. However, those individuals who behaved dishonestly, even when telling the truth, showed additional activity in brain regions that involve control and attention.

Childhood adversity may affect processing in the brain’s reward pathways

404132862 — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:26:05 -0400

New research shows that childhood adversity is associated with diminished neural activity in certain regions of the brain.

Harvard researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor brain activity as participants played a game involving cues that predicted monetary re-wards and penalties.

Individual primates display variation in general intelligence

50443248 — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:57:23 -0400

Scientists at Harvard University have shown, for the first time, that intelligence varies among individual monkeys within a species – in this case, the cotton-top tamarin.

Testing for broad cognitive ability, the researchers identified high-, middle-, and low-performing monkeys, determined by a general intelligence score. General intelligence, or g, is a hallmark of human cognition, often described as similar to IQ. The effect of g in primates may offer insights into the evolution of human general intelligence.

A Memory for Faces, Extreme Version

50443248 — Tue, 26 May 2009 10:59:13 -0400

‘Super-recognizers' never forget a face

50443248 — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:12:50 -0400

Some people say they never forget a face, a claim now bolstered by psychologists at Harvard University who’ve discovered a group they call “super-recognizers”: those who can easily recognize someone they met in passing, even many years later.

The new study suggests that skill in facial recognition might vary widely among humans. Previous research has identified as much as 2 percent of the population as having “face-blindness,” or prosopagnosia, a condition characterized by great difficulty in recognizing faces.

Face recognition ability varies widely

50443248 — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:04:53 -0400

Some vocal-mimicking animals, particularly parrots, can move to a musical beat

50443248 — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:57:42 -0400

Researchers at Harvard University have found that humans aren’t the only ones who can groove to a beat — some other species can dance, too. The capability was previously believed to be specific to humans. The research team found that only species that can mimic sound seem to be able to keep a beat, implying an evolutionary link between the two capacities.

The study was led by Adena Schachner, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Harvard, and is published in the current issue of Current Biology. Schachner’s co-authors are Marc Hauser, professor of psychology at Harvard; Irene Pepperberg, lecturer at Harvard and adjunct associate professor of psychology at Brandeis University; and Timothy Brady, a doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For hints on humans, scientists study dogs' thinking

404132862 — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:43:19 -0400

A mother’s criticism touches nerve in formerly depressed

50443248 — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:05:25 -0400

Formerly depressed women show patterns of brain activity when they are criticized by their mothers that are distinctly different from the patterns shown by never-depressed controls, according to a new study from Harvard University.

The participants reported being completely well and fully recovered, yet their neural activity resembled that which has been observed in depressed individuals in other studies.

"My genome, my self"

404132862 — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 10:33:54 -0500

One of the perks of being a psychologist is access to tools that allow you to carry out the injunction to know thyself. I have been tested for vocational interest (closest match: psychologist), intelligence (above average), personality (open, conscientious, agreeable, average in extraversion, not too neurotic) and political orientation (neither leftist nor rightist, more libertarian than authoritarian).

Behavior: pain is greater if harm seems intentional

404132862 — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:52:50 -0500

Susan Carey receives David E. Rumelhart Prize

404132862 — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:36:16 -0400

Susan Carey, a Harvard psychologist whose work has explored fundamental issues surrounding the nature of the human mind, has been awarded the 2009 David E. Rumelhart Prize, given annually since 2001 for significant contributions to the theoretical foundation of human cognition.

Carey, the Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is the first woman to receive the prize. Additionally, Carey is the first recipient of the prize for theoretical contributions to the study of human development. Previously, the award was given only for work involved with computational modeling.