A review of the development of criminal profiling demonstrates that profiling has never been a scientific process. It is essentially based on a compendium of common sense intuitions and faulty theoretical assumptions, and in practice appears to consist of little more than educated guesses and wishful thinking. While it is very difficult to find cases where profiling made a critical contribution to an investigation, there exist a number of cases where a profile, combined with investigative and prosecutorial enthusiasm, derailed the investigation and even contributed to serious miscarriages of justice.

{ Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice/SAGE | Continue reading }

When we’re making a snap judgement about a fact, the mere presence of an accompanying photograph makes us more likely to think it’s true, even when the photo doesn’t provide any evidence one way or the other. In the words of Eryn Newman and her colleagues, uninformative photographs “inflate truthiness.” […]

The researchers can’t be sure: “We speculate that nonprobative photos and verbal information help people generate pseudo evidence,” they said.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

photo { 16 year old Jerry Hall on a road trip, photographed by Antonio Lopez }

This study finds that women who read sex-related magazine articles from popular women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan are less likely to view premarital sex as a risky behavior. Additionally, the women who are exposed to these articles are more supportive of sexual behavior that both empowers women and prioritizes their own sexual pleasure.

{ SAGE | Continue reading }

Can you determine a person’s character in a single interaction? Can you judge whether someone you just met can be trusted when you have only a few minutes together? And if you can, how do you do it?

Using a robot named Nexi, psychology professor David DeSteno and collaborators […] have figured out the answer. […]

In the absence of reliable information about a person’s reputation, nonverbal cues can offer a look into a person’s likely actions. This concept has been known for years, but the cues that convey trustworthiness or untrustworthiness have remained a mystery. Collecting data from face-to-face conversations with research participants where money was on the line, DeSteno and his team realized that it’s not one single non-verbal movement or cue that determines a person’s trustworthiness, but rather sets of cues.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

photo { Garry Winogrand }

The tumor that appeared on a second scan. The guy in accounting who was secretly embezzling company funds. The situation may be different each time, but we hear ourselves say it over and over again: “I knew it all along.”

The problem is that too often we actually didn’t know it all along, we only feel as though we did. The phenomenon, which researchers refer to as “hindsight bias,” is one of the most widely studied decision traps and has been documented in various domains, including medical diagnoses, accounting and auditing decisions, athletic competition, and political strategy. […]

Roese and Vohs propose that there are three levels of hindsight bias. […] The first level of hindsight bias, memory distortion, involves misremembering an earlier opinion or judgment (”I said it would happen”). The second level, inevitability, centers on our belief that the event was inevitable (”It had to happen”). And the third level, foreseeability, involves the belief that we personally could have foreseen the event (”I knew it would happen”).

{ ScienceDaily | Continue reading }

images { 1. Joao Penalva | 2 }

To be a ‘success’ in evolutionary terms, women need to have access to resources for raising offspring, and men need to have access to fertile females. Researchers have argued that women tend to prefer partners who have an ability to invest resources in their children (i.e., wealthy men), and men tend to prefer partners who appear fertile (i.e., young women) because evolutionary adaptations have programmed these preferences in our brains.

But in the modern world, ‘success’ is not necessarily tied to offspring, so researchers […] hypothesized that the influence of evolutionary biases on mate choice would decline proportionally with nations’ gender parity, or the equality between men and women. […] They found that the gender difference in mate preferences predicted by evolutionary psychology models “is highest in gender-unequal societies, and smallest in the most gender-equal societies,” according to Zentner.

{ APS | Continue reading }

Emotion recognition, a core component of emotional intelligence, is the general ability to recognize emotions. […]

For decades, researchers have known that skill in emotion recognition predicts positive outcomes in a wide range of contexts. From business executives to foreign service officers to elementary school principals, studies have shown a positive association between skill in emotion recognition and success in a wide variety of educational, workplace, or organizational contexts. Sensitivity to the internal states of colleagues, note the authors, can assist in coordinating activities and working independently. Emotion recognition, however, is a complex skill.

A person can express emotion by voice tones, facial expressions, body movements, or a combination of these “channels.” Each channel or combination can communicate a number of different emotions. […] Our facial expressions are, according to published research, highly controllable, express the information we choose to communicate, and as a result, “this information is more subject to impression management.” Emotion information conveyed through body movement or voice channels, however, may provide, according to the authors, a truer window into a person’s feelings. The ability to control the expression of emotion through these channels is more difficult, and requires more effort. […]

Emotion recognition is about reading social cues. The researchers label this skill “nonverbal eavesdropping.” […] Some people have problems when they lack the ability to read social cues around them. The study authors noted that some people have a different kind of problem with emotion recognition: They have the potential to “read too much” in a particular situation. […]

Sadness was the easiest emotion to recognize and fear the most difficult;

Accuracy did not differ across positive versus negative emotions;

Accuracy varied by channel, with emotions easier to recognize through facial photographs than vocal tone;

Anger and fear were more easier to recognize in the voice;

Happiness and sadness were relatively easier to recognize in the face;

Emotional eavesdropping ability varied significantly across emotions, with anger and fear were more easily eavesdropped than happiness or sadness;

{ Psycholawgy | Continue reading }

artwork { Pablo Picasso, Femme étendue lisant, 1952 }

Researchers have confirmed what many suspected - pop music over the last five decades has grown progressively more sad-sounding and emotionally ambiguous. They analyzed the tempo (fast or slow) and mode (major or minor) of the most popular 1,010 pop songs identified using year-end lists published by Billboard magazine in the USA from 1965 to 2009. Tempo was determined using the beats per minute of a song, and where this was ambiguous the researchers used the rate at which you’d clap along. The mode of the song was identified from its tonic chord - the three notes played together at the outset, in either minor or major. Happy sounding songs are typically of fast tempo in major mode, whilst sad songs are slow and in minor. Songs can also be emotionally ambiguous, having a tempo that’s fast in minor, or vice versa.

The researchers found that the proportion of songs recorded in minor-mode has increased, doubling over the last fifty years. The proportion of slow tempo hits has also increased linearly, reaching a peak in the 90s. There’s also been a decrease in unambiguously happy-sounding songs and an increase in emotionally ambiguous songs.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

In a series of four experiments Milkman found that dealing with uncertainty exhausts self-control, and thus makes it more likely you’ll choose a “want” option (i.e. behaviors that are hedonistic, irresponsible, or aimed at short-term gain) over a “should” option (i.e. behaviors aimed at long term-gain.) […]

The study also hints at why habits are so important. If you get home from work and stop to think “will I go to the gym today?”, that uncertainty is already starting to sap your ability to control your gym-avoiding tendencies. But if you get home knowing you’ll go to the gym because you’ve gone on 23 consecutive Tuesdays, it will be easier to actually go.

{ peer-reviewed by my neurons | Continue reading }

art { Xu Zhen }

The tendency for experiences to create more happiness than material possessions is one scientific finding that’s recently received a lot of attention. While most media coverage about the joy of experiences has focused on the abstract question of how to be happy, evidence is building that beliefs about materialism and happiness can also have concrete implications for a person’s day-to-day to life.

For example, two recent studies have found a connection between materialism and poor money management. This means that convincing people material possessions aren’t the key to happiness won’t simply help them spend their Christmas bonus more wisely, it may also lead to better overall financial management.

{ peer-reviewed by my neurons | Continue reading }

photo { Matthew Reamer }

A team of organizational behavior scientists recently examined nonharassing sexual behavior at work and its consequences for employees. They based their predictions on theories of power and gender and systematically examined men’s and women’s experiences of sexual behavior at work without imposing a positive or negative lens on the behavior. No prior studies had done this. The results show that workplace sexual behavior is enjoyed by some women and many men but it is generally associated with negative work-related and psychological outcomes, regardless of whether it is enjoyed or disliked.

Some may think it is “fun” or “good” or argue that sexual behavior at work is “typically harmless.” Others may suggest that sexual banter and sexual jokes may provide a fun and jovial atmosphere at work, or that workplace sexual flirtation can be flattering and lead to love or romance. But, these and other sexual behaviors in the workplace correlate with serious and substantial mental and psychological harm, even to those workers who said they enjoyed the experience. The researchers also found no evidence to support any positive evaluation of the effect of sexual behavior in the workplace or that it provides any benefit to employees who enjoy it.

{ Psycholawlogy | Continue reading }

related { Sexual Consent as Voluntary Agreement: Tales of ‘Seduction’ or Questions of Law? }

I have read several times that there is evidence of a U-curve in happiness over an individual’s life. People are happy in their youth, and happy again after retirement, but suffer from a serious malaise in between as they grapple with their finances, careers and family life. […] Today I was glad to find some evidence that the U-curve is just a statistical illusion. […]

Happiness is nearly flat from 20 through 50. Frijter’s explanation for the disagreement with the existing literature is that, “happy people in middle age are busy and don’t have time to participate in lengthy questionnaires, leading previous studies to erroneously think there was a huge degree of unhappiness in middle-age.”

{ OvercomingBias | Continue reading }

photo { Irving Penn, Girl in Bed (Jean Patchett), New York, 1949 }

A number of recent papers have found that religious and paranormal beliefs were positively associated with “intuitive” thinking and negatively associated with “analytical” thinking. One of these studies investigated personality traits and found that openness to experience had a moderate negative correlation with belief in God, suggesting that the more open to experience people are, the less likely they are to believe. […]

Openness to experience is a broad feature of personality associated with intellectual curiosity, artistic interests, questioning of traditional values and authority, and willingness to explore new experiences and activities. Openness to experience is positively related to a construct called need for cognition, which is associated with analytical thinking.

{ Eye on Psych | Continue reading }

art { Gary Hume, The Dryad, 2012 }

If you’re unusually insightful and perceptive, like me, you may have noticed that boastfulness is increasingly socially acceptable these days. […]

With so many more channels through which to manipulate one’s public image, it’s not especially surprising that we are tempted to present ourselves as positively as possible. The filters of social media make things worse. A network such as Twitter is designed precisely to connect you with exactly the kinds of people who don’t mind your boasts, while those who might keep you in check won’t follow you in the first place: your audience thus serves as an army of enablers, applauding your self-applause. […]

But, as the Wall Street Journal noted this week, in a worried piece headlined Are We All Braggarts Now?, the causes may be economic, too. In the most competitive job market in recent memory, the pressure to portray yourself as better than everyone else is intense. Predictably, there’s neuroscientific evidence to undergird all this: self-disclosure activates the same brain regions as eating or sex, according to research by Harvard neuroscientists.

{ Oliver Burkeman/Guardian | Continue reading }

photo { Charlie Engman }

Consider two questions. First: Who are you? What makes you different from your peers, in terms of the things you buy, the clothes you wear, and the car you drive (or refuse to)? What makes you unique in terms of your basic psychological make-up—the part of you that makes you do the things you do, say the things you say, and feel the things you feel? And the second question: How do you use the internet?

Although these questions may seem unrelated, they’re not. Clearly the content of your internet usage can suggest certain psychological characteristics. […] how often you email others, chat online, stream media, or multi-task (switch from one application or website to another)? Can these behaviors—regardless of their content—also predict psychological characteristics?

Recent research conducted by a team of computer scientists, engineers, and psychologists suggests that it might. Indeed, their data show that such analysis could predict a particularly important aspect of the self: the tendency to experience depression.

{ Scientific American | Continue reading }

The price a consumer will pay for a product is often significantly less than the price they will accept to sell it. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, this occurs because ownership of a product enhances its value by creating an association between the product and consumer identity.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

In many restaurants throughout the world, wait staff’s income depends largely on the tips received from customers. According to this study, male restaurant customers give higher tips to waitresses wearing red. […]

Men gave between 14.6% and 26.1% more to waitresses wearing red, while color had no effect on female patrons’ tipping behavior at all.

{ SAGE | Continue reading }

photo { Nick Meek }

Previous research on gender effects in robots has largely ignored the role of facial cues. We fill this gap in the literature by experimentally investigating the effects of facial gender cues on stereotypical trait and application ascriptions to robots. As predicted, the short-haired male robot was perceived as more agentic than was the long-haired female robot, whereas the female robot was perceived as more communal than was the male counterpart. Analogously, stereotypically male tasks were perceived more suitable for the male robot, relative to the female robot, and vice versa.

{ Journal of Applied Social Psychology | via Mind Hacks }

photo { Barbara Crane }

According to new research published this week in the journal PLoS ONE, times of stress turn everyday men into ass men. […]

After they were shown images of women of different shapes and sizes, the stressed out dudes preferred ladies who happened to have bigger behinds.

{ LA Weekly | Continue reading | Thanks Serge! }

The researchers were interested in how people jump to conclusions based on limited information. Previous work by Tversky, Daniel Kahneman and other psychologists found that people are “radically insensitive to both the quantity and quality of information that gives rise to impressions and intuitions,” so the researchers knew, of course, that we humans don’t do a particularly good job of weighing the pros and cons. But to what degree? […]

The key part of the experiment was that the participants were fully aware of the setup; they knew that they were only hearing one side or the entire story. But this didn’t stop the subjects who heard one-sided evidence from being more confident and biased with their judgments than those who saw both sides. That is, even when people had all the underlying facts, they jumped to conclusions after hearing only one side of the story.

The good news is that Brenner, Koehler and Tversky found that simply prompting participants to consider the other side’s story reduced their bias – instructions to consider the missing information was a manipulation in a later study – but it certainly did not eliminate it. Their study shows us that people are not only willing to jump to conclusions after hearing only one side’s story, but that even when they have additional information at their disposal that would suggest a different conclusion, they are still surprisingly likely to do so.

{ Scientific American | Continue reading }