A story in this month's New York Times summarizes a bunch of studies that address the question of whether video games cause violent behavior. Read the story here. The article summarizes research from psychology, sociology, and criminal justice scholars. Some of the studies are correlational, and others are experimental. Here's one study described in the …
Continue reading Studying video games in the lab and in the real world.
A study tested long-term IQ changes of people who smoked marijuana as teenagers. The study is described here. ...participants were tested for IQ twice in the study: once at age 13, and once at age 38. ...researchers found that those who used marijuana regularly before the age of 18 showed a drop in IQ score. …
In the news recently: Applications for gun safety (which are required in order to purchase a gun in some U.S. states) have increased about 25% recently. The timing of the increase comes right after the tragedy in Aurora, CO, in which a gunman killed 12 people and injured dozens of others. Here's an example of …
This recent report from the New York Times focuses on California's high school students. About five years ago, the state banned junk foods like soda, chips, and candy from high schools in the state. Now a study has reported that California students eat fewer calories than students in other states. The study found that California …
Continue reading California high schoolers eat fewer calories…
This recent feature in the Wall Street Journal reviews several studies on how IQ changes over time. The studies were conducted by a variety of researchers using a variety of methods. Here is one example: A 30-year study at the National Institute of Mental Health found that people whose work involves complex relationships, setting up …
Going to college adds 15 pounds, right? Not according to this report. The story reports that a group of researchers interviewed over 7,000 people aged 17 to 20. The study found that freshmen in the sample gained, on average, 2.5 to 3.5 pounds in the past year. However, the study also found that young adults …
Here is a link to a short video featuring Dr. Michael Gazzaniga discussing his experiences as a scientist. His work on split brain patients is described in Chapter 12.
This story reports that pregnant women are less likely to go into spontaneous labor on a negatively toned holiday (Halloween). Similarly, they are more likely to do so on a positively toned holiday (Valentine's Day). Here's a quote from the New York Times story: In a study published this month, however, researchers at the Yale …
Journalists have been covering a recent empirical article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study in question is a quasi-experiment; it tracked the testosterone levels of a probability sample of men in the Philippines. The main result was that compared to men of the same age who'd never had children, …
Here's a study on the moods of a sample of bus drivers. Bus driving is a profession in which people must be courteous to others throughout the day. What impact might such job-mandated courtesy have on bus drivers? The article reports that, ... on days when the smiles were forced, the subjects’ moods deteriorated and …