In this intriguing talk, David Pizarro speaks about the emotion of disgust, and its far reaching influence on our thoughts and actions. He explains that while disgust acts as an effective defense mechanism against physiological poisons, the emotion also strongly affects our moral judgment as well as our political orientation.
What would you do if you witnessed a 7 year old girl being abducted in broad daylight? Would you rush to the child’s aid? Would you call the police? As security specialist Bill Stanton demonstrated, people in general were more likely to:
How far would you go before admitting you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about? The young men in the video above conducted an experiment with the aim of testing the listening ability of various persons. What the results show, however, is that if we have the preconceived notion that we are very knowledgeable in a particular topic, we will say almost anything before we admit to ignorance.
“Technically, you are using ‘Reverse Psychology’ when you intentionally and strongly argue in favor of a decision or behavior while secretly wanting the receiver of your argument to endorse the opposite decision or behavior” (Pantalon, 2011). Continue reading
Or so the researchers at UCLA would have us believe. Assistant professor of psychology Naomi Eisenberger and psychology graduate Tristen Inagaki performed an experiment on 20 heterosexual couples in romantic relationships at UCLA’s Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center.
In the experiment, each boyfriend received painful electric shocks while his girlfriend’s brain activity was monitored using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Inagaki and Eisenberger “explored the potentially beneficial effects of support giving by examining the neural substrates of giving support to a loved one.” They “focused on a priori regions of interest in the ventral striatum and septal area (SA) because of their role in maternal caregiving behavior in animals” (Inagaki and Eisenberger, 2012). Continue reading
