Extras

Eye-catching studies that didn't make the final cut:

Voodoo correlations are everywhere, not just in neuroscience. [Background].

More stats controversy. "There are four major problems with using p as a measure of evidence and these problems are often overlooked in the domain of psychology." Read more.

Differences in how men and women compete. "In two studies, adult human females, compared with males, were more likely to react to the possibility of social exclusion by socially excluding a third party." Read more.

Implicit measures in psychology may be sexy but they're often unreliable. Read more.

Nerves hinder negotiation. "...negotiators who feel anxious expect lower outcomes, make lower first offers, respond more quickly to offers, exit bargaining situations earlier, and ultimately obtain worse outcomes." Read more.

OTOH, mimicking others' language online aids negotiation. "...negotiators who actively mimicked their counterpart's language in the first 10 min of the negotiation obtained higher individual gain compared to those mimicking during the last 10 min, as well as compared to control participants." Read more.

Bi-directional links between semantic memory and sense of identity in older adults. "...autobiographical memory for all time periods (childhood, early adulthood, and recent life) in the semantic domain was associated with greater strength in personal identity. ... However, there was also support for a reverse mediation model indicating that a strong sense of identity is associated with semantic self-knowledge and through this may enhance self-relevant recollection." Read more.

Depth cues in paintings cause people to sway. Read more.

US study finds women are more fearful than men of having their intellectual capabilities tested in public. "...women must overcome fears about doing poorly in public and fears of criticism from others. They must learn to handle criticism without letting it affect the way they feel about themselves. The challenge is to adopt a positive view of their ability as continuously developing and to approach public performances as opportunities to welcome, rather than threats to avoid." Read more.

Praying for a stranger led provoked participants to react with less anger and aggression. Read more.

Don't pick on Dawkins! Reminders of atheist prevalence reduced distrust and prejudice towards atheists. Read more.

When gay men reveal their homosexuality later in an interaction, prejudice toward them is reduced

Unlike other stigmatised groups, such as ethnic minorities or the elderly, people who are homosexual usually have the option of concealing their sexual identity when they interact with others. This raises an obvious question - does it make any difference to the risk of a negative reception, whether a gay person discloses their gay status early or late in an interaction?

David Buck and Ashby Plant investigated this issue in relation to gay men. Forty-five heterosexual male and female undergrad students and non-students took part in what they thought was a study of first-time social interactions. Tested alone, they listened to a pre-recorded interview with a man who they thought they were going to meet soon afterwards. The taped interview lasted eight minutes and the man was asked about his life and his interests. Crucially, he was asked about his romantic situation either at the start (the second question) or right at the end of the interview, and it was in his answer to this question that he disclosed his sexual orientation as gay. Half the participants heard the early disclosure version, half heard the late version.

Among the male participants only, the timing of the disclosure made a big difference. Those who heard the early disclosure subsequently reported more frustration at having to meet the man, more negative expectations for how the meeting would go, and more negative prejudice towards gay people generally, than did the male participants who heard the late disclosure recording.

It was a similar story in a second study involving a further 85 participants, with the following changes: the interview was shown on video, not just audio; there was an additional comparison condition in which the interviewed man disclosed that he was heterosexual; the participants chose traits that they felt best described the man, thus revealing how much they had stereotyped him (e.g. as 'feminine', 'artsy', 'melodramatic'); and the participants also chose letters for the man to use to compile a word (choosing difficult letters for him was taken as a sign of hostility).

Once again, for the male participants only, the timing of the man's disclosure about his gay status made a big difference - an early disclosure led the male participants to feel more negative about the man, to show more hostility toward him and to attribute him with more gay stereotype traits. In fact, the stereotyping mediated the effect of early/late disclosure on all the other factors. The message is clear - an early disclosure coloured the male participants' perception of the remainder of the interview, rousing their prejudices towards the man. By contrast, male participants who heard the late disclosure appeared to form a non-stereotyped view of the man, thus reducing their prejudice and hostility even after he disclosed his gay status. In contrast to these effects, timing of disclosure made no difference to perceptions of the man in the condition in which he revealed himself to be heterosexual.

So, what are the lessons from this research? A 'grim interpretation' Buck and Plant said, would be for gay men to hold back on revealing their homosexuality, so as to reduce the likelihood they will be the victims of prejudice. However, they noted that that would be to focus solely on the implications for the victims of prejudice - what about the perpetrators? 'By understanding these issues we may be better equipped to identify situations in which bias might be more likely to occur and, thus, have the opportunity to more effectively reduce discrimination,' the researchers said. 'Our hope is that rather than encourage people to conceal their sexual orientation, this research will help to advance a culture in which people will not feel the need to hide.'

Further research is needed to establish whether similar processes occur for lesbians and for other stigmatised groups where it's possible to control the timing of disclosure (e.g. people diagnosed with a mental illness). Another issue ripe for investigation is whether the effect of disclosure timing varies according to the timescale - a disclosure after weeks, rather than eight minutes, might well have a different outcome.
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Buck, D., and Plant, E. (2011). Interorientation interactions and impressions: Does the timing of disclosure of sexual orientation matter? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47 (2), 333-342 DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.10.016

Athletes are more skilled at crossing the road than non-athletes

They impress on the sports field with their rapid reactions and fancy footwork, but do athletes' abilities translate to the real world? Past research on this topic, nearly all of it lab-based, has demonstrated superior performance by athletes on sport-specific and basic psychological tests, such as of attention and processing speed. Now Laura Chaddock and her colleagues have shown that the athletic advantage translates to an everyday task - crossing a busy road, albeit that this was tested using an immersive virtual reality treadmill.

Eighteen male and female athletes (including football players, swimmers and tennis players; all Division 1 performers at university) and 18 non-athletic, healthy controls, all donned virtual reality goggles and walked on a treadmill to cross a simulated eight-metre wide, two-lane road - a multi-faceted task requiring skilled attentional processing and coordination. The two participant groups were matched for academic ability, age, height, weight and video-game experience.

The cars on the road travelled with a simulated speed of 40 to 55 miles an hour. There was no safe zone to stop in the middle and no opportunity to walk backwards or sideways, so once participants had made a decision to cross, they had to go through with it. Their challenge was to get to the other side within thirty seconds, without being hit. To spice things up, two distraction conditions required the participants to conduct a conversation on a hands-free kit or listen to their favoured music on an ipod as they crossed the road. The participants also had their reaction times tested in a basic computer task.

The take-home finding is that overall the athletes out-performed the non-athletes: they crossed successfully on 72 per cent of trials compared with the non-athletes' success rate of 55 per cent. However, this superiority didn't apply when only the distraction conditions were considered - the researchers think this is because the distraction of a complex conversation isn't a part of most sports. The athletes were also faster at the simple reaction time task and statistical analysis suggested this factor accounted for their superiority at road crossing.

'Our results suggest that cognitive skills trained in sport may engender transfer to performance on everyday challenges,' the researchers said. 'To provide a sport-specific example, it is plausible that an elite soccer player not only shows an ability to multitask and process incoming information quickly on a fast-paced soccer field ... he or she also shows these skills in the context of real world tasks.' However, Chaddock's team conceded that their cross-sectional design means they have yet to demonstrate that playing a sport causes these advantages - it could plausibly be that people with these skills are more likely to take up a sport.
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Chaddock, L., Neider, M., Voss, M., Gaspar, J., and Kramer, A. (2011). Do Athletes Excel At Everyday Tasks? Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e318218ca74