Group items tagged

Researchers at the University of Rochester have determined that when humans see the color red, their reactions become both faster and more forceful. The researchers measured the reactions of students in two experiments. In the first, 30 fourth-through-10th graders pinched and held open a metal clasp. Right before doing so, they read aloud their participant number written in either red or gray crayon. In the second experiment, 46 undergraduates squeezed a handgrip with their dominant hand as hard as possible when they read the word "squeeze" on a computer monitor. The word appeared on a red, blue, or gray background. In both scenarios, red significantly increased the force exerted, with participants in the red condition squeezing with greater maximum force than those in the gray or blue conditions, the researchers said. Ref.: Andrew J. Elliot, Henk Aarts, Perception of the color red enhances the force and velocity of motor output, Emotion, Vol 11(2), Apr 2011, 445-449

""You'll see I wear only gray or blue suits," he said. "I'm trying to pare down decisions. I don't want to make decisions about what I'm eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make." He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one's ability to make further decisions. It's why shopping is so exhausting. "You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can't be going through the day distracted by trivia." The self-discipline he believes is required to do the job well comes at a high price. "You can't wander around," he said. "It's much harder to be surprised. You don't have those moments of serendipity."

"We are a superficial species. And this brings me to a fascinating new paper by an all star team of psychologists, including Kurt Gray, Joshua Knobe, Mark Sheskin, Paul Bloom and Lisa Feldman Barrett.. we automatically assume that the capacity to think and the capacity to feel are in opposition. It's a zero sum game. What does all this have to do with nakedness? The psychologists demonstrated it's quite easy to shift our perceptions of other people from having a mind full of agency to having a mind interested in experience: all they have to do is take off their clothes."