When the fans are away, the home team loses its sway, new research suggests. During the 2019–2020 season, European soccer teams played in front of vacant stadium seats due to…
Category: Psychology
‘Ghost games’ spotlight the psychological effect fans have on referees
When the fans are away, the home team loses its sway, new research suggests. During the 2019–2020 season, European soccer teams played in front of vacant stadium seats due to…
How the strange idea of ‘statistical significance’ was born
In the middle of the 20th century, the field of psychology had a problem. In the wake of the Manhattan Project and in the early days of the space race,…
Psychology has struggled for a century to make sense of the mind
One of the most infamous psychology experiments ever conducted involved a carefully planned form of child abuse. The study rested on a simple scheme that would never get approved or…
Moral judgments about an activity’s COVID-19 risk can lead people astray
What do you think was riskier during the pre-vaccine days of the pandemic: having your lonely parents over for dinner or going to a beach filled with dozens of strangers?…
Playing brain training games regularly doesn’t boost brainpower
It’s an attractive idea: By playing online problem-solving, matching and other games for a few minutes a day, people can improve such mental abilities as reasoning, verbal skills and memory.…
Small bribes may help people build healthy handwashing habits
Good habits are hard to adopt. But a little bribery can go a long way. That’s the finding from an experiment in India that used rewards to get villagers hooked…
Surprisingly, humans recognize joyful screams faster than fearful screams
Screams of joy appear to be easier for our brains to comprehend than screams of fear, a new study suggests. The results add a surprising new layer to scientists’ long-held…
People add by default even when subtraction makes more sense
Picture a bridge made of Legos. One side has three support pieces, the other two. How would you stabilize the bridge? Most people would add a piece so that there…
Parents in Western countries report the highest levels of burnout
The ongoing pandemic has hammered parents. For many, work shifted to home. Schools closed or went partially remote in many places. Grandparents at high risk of getting severely ill with…
