Psychology

On a recent Friday morning, a classroom of teenagers at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School broke up into small groups and spent an hour not answering questions about Albert Camus's "The Plague. " It wasn't that the students were shy, or bored, or that they hadn't done the reading. They were following instructions: Ask as many questions as they could, and answer none of them. The kids wrote in rapid fire on sheets of butcher paper. "Why is everyone acting normal when people are dropping dead?"

Singing Gilbert and Sullivan songs around the house, pipe in hand, and working against a backdrop of bookshelves lined with scholarly texts, Mortimer Herbert Appley looked every bit the academician. Over the course of a half-century, his lengthy curriculum vitae balanced teaching, research, and leading Clark University in Worcester through trying times. At the helm of Clark in the mid-1970s, Dr. Appley was "quiet-spoken, and yet something about him gave him a sense of authority," said his longtime friend and former colleague Pat Pattullo of Concord.

Is fiction good for us? We spend huge chunks of our lives immersed in novels, films, TV shows, and other forms of fiction. Some see this as a positive thing, arguing that made-up stories cultivate our mental and moral development. But others have argued that fiction is mentally and ethically corrosive. It's an ancient question: Does fiction build the morality of individuals and societies, or does it break it down? This controversy has been flaring up — sometimes literally, in the form of book burnings — ever since Plato tried to ban fiction from his ideal republic.

... is online here . Ought you cover up a thyroidectomy scar in public? What says psychology? Sans scarf, you'll be an object of curiosity, for those observant enough to notice your scar in the first place. But that could be fewer people than you'd imagine. A psychological experiment has shown that folks who are even mildly distracted can be astonishingly oblivious to all sorts of things, up to and including a chest-pounding woman in a gorilla suit. (Another experiment has shown that political conservatives notice and fixate on unpleasant stimuli, like a surgical scar, more than liberals do. Try to notice...

This Changes Everything: The Relational Revolution in Psychology , By Christina Robb, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 454 pp., $30 Forty years ago, in "The Duality of Human Existence," David Bakan proffered a distinction between an alleged masculine orientation to action and exerting power, and a feminine communing orientation. Women, he wrote, were socialized to orient their lives around relationships. I cannot recall whether Bakan cited Heidegger's provocative notion that we don't have relationships as much as we are relationships.

Sept. 11 transformed the world of American ideas in many ways—fueling sharp debates about America's role in world affairs, about the clash of religions, about freedom and security. Money flowed into counter-terrorism research. Universities hired experts on Islam and the Middle East; students flocked to courses on any subject they thought might help them understand what had happened. The attacks also began to reshape our knowledge in ways that didn't make headlines, revealing gaps in our knowledge of terrorism, of the costs of security, of the human response to...

In her new book, “The Optimism Bias,” scientist Tali Sharot explores the human urge to believe things will work out, even when all signs point otherwise. Sharot has a PhD in psychology and neuroscience from New York University and is a research fellow at University College in London, where she lives. She reads at Brookline Booksmith this Wednesday at 7 p.m. What are you reading now? I’m reading “The Easter Parade” by Richard Yates. I’m drawn, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, to books that explore the human condition or psyche.

All the conspiracies are true! Is Osama bin Laden still alive? Or was he already dead before the US raid that supposedly killed him? These two conspiracy theories appear to contradict each other, but psychologists in Britain have found that such logical problems don't deter conspiracists from believing both. When people were asked about the Osama bin Laden raid, endorsing one of these theories didn't preclude endorsing the other. Likewise, when asked to evaluate various theories about the death of Princess Diana, even people who arguably should've known...

NEW YORK - Robert Glaser, a cognitive psychologist who helped define the terms of the national debate over student testing and who pioneered ways of measuring not only how students learn but how teachers teach, died Feb. 4 in Pittsburgh. He was 91. The cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease, said a spokesman for the University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center, which Dr. Glaser helped found in 1963. Dr. Glaser was probably best known for promoting a standardized test that became the norm for the federal government's National...

From his 20s on, United Methodist minister Homer L. Jernigan began every day at 5:30 a.m. by reading a chapter of the Bible, starting with the Old Testament, then the Apocrypha, then the New Testament. "This man really knew his Bible," said his son, David H. Jernigan, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. "My father was a minister who practiced more than he preached," he said, including "making the pastorate work better" by combining psychology, clinical practice, and spiritual understanding.

NEW YORK - Robert Glaser, a cognitive psychologist who helped define the terms of the national debate over student testing and who pioneered ways of measuring not only how students learn but how teachers teach, died Feb. 4 in Pittsburgh. He was 91. The cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease, said a spokesman for the University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center, which Dr. Glaser helped found in 1963. Dr. Glaser was probably best known for promoting a standardized test that became the norm for the federal government's National Assessment of...

A classic guide for lawyers about the science behind expert courtroom testimony by mental health professionals has been updated by a University of Rhode Island professor. The university says Oxford University Press recently released a new version of "Coping with Psychiatric and Psychological Testimony" that was brought up to date by clinical psychology professor David Faust. The reference book was originally written by the late lawyer and psychologist Jay Ziskin, who was credited with helping lawyers challenge psychiatric and psychological testimony.

All the conspiracies are true! Is Osama bin Laden still alive? Or was he already dead before the US raid that supposedly killed him? These two conspiracy theories appear to contradict each other, but psychologists in Britain have found that such logical problems don't deter conspiracists from believing both. When people were asked about the Osama bin Laden raid, endorsing one of these theories didn't preclude endorsing the other. Likewise, when asked to evaluate various theories about the death of Princess Diana, even people who arguably should've known better — British students in a...

A dozen western New York high school girls have developed involuntary tics and other symptoms, and a doctor said Friday that at least 10 of them are suffering from a psychological condition usually brought on by stress or a frightening condition. Parents became concerned there might have been environmental contamination or an infection at LeRoy High School when the girls all started showing symptoms like unexplained pain and involuntary muscle motion last fall. But air quality and other tests conducted by local health officials ruled out mold, chemicals and other...

In English, we use certain words to describe our inner lives -- we talk about minds, thoughts, feelings, decisions, and memories. Those words have an inevitable effect on the science of psychology. Writing at their blog, Psych Science Notes, the psychologists Andrew D. Wilson and Sabrina Golonka ask how speakers of other languages think about the inner life. How would psychology be different, they wonder, if it had been developed in Japan, or Russia? Other languages, they point out, have other words for "mind.

In Sunday's Ideas section, Leon Neyfakh explores the latest research from psychology and economics about why and how we give to charity. It turns out that we give irrationally, and that being irrational actually helps us to give more: [F]or those of us just looking to donate, and donate well, the emerging research on charitable giving has yielded a difficult truth: Thinking harder about how to give makes us less likely to give at all... "What we find is that when people are thinking more deliberatively . . . they end up being less generous overall," said Deborah Small, an...

Relevant to our lively discussion about the infertile in-laws, Mind Hacks has a (somewhat irreverent) post on the psychology of men who donate sperm. 

In English, we use certain words to describe our inner lives -- we talk about minds, thoughts, feelings, decisions, and memories. Those words have an inevitable effect on the science of psychology. Writing at their blog, Psych Science Notes, the psychologists Andrew D. Wilson and Sabrina Golonka ask how speakers of other languages think about the inner life. How would psychology be different, they wonder, if it had been developed in Japan, or Russia? Other languages, they point out, have other words for "mind.

Count your blessings this Thanksgiving. It's good for you. While it seems pretty obvious that gratitude is a positive emotion, psychologists for decades rarely delved into the science of giving thanks. But in the last several years they have, learning in many experiments that it is one of humanity's most powerful emotions. It makes you happier and can change your attitude about life, like an emotional reset button. Especially in hard times, like these. Beyond proving that being grateful helps you, psychologists also are trying to figure out the brain chemistry behind...

The Stoneham Middle School Parent Teacher Organization is scheduled to host a workshop from 7 to 9 p.m. on Wednesday in the school's auditorium. The workshop, designed for parents of middle school and high school students, will address adolescent psychology. Joani Geltman, a child development and parenting specialist who is on the faculty at Lesley University and Curry College, will be the featured speaker. Geltman, who has been working with parents, children, universities, and schools for some 30 years, will provide parents with tips on how to navigate their child's...