Meditating stand

“The authors explored whether meditation training to enhance emotional awareness improves discrimination of subtle emotional feelings hypothesized to guide decision-making … meditators reported greater emotional clarity than controls, and meditators with higher clarity had reduced arousal and improved valence discrimination in the masked condition. These findings provide qualified support for the somatic marker hypothesis and suggest that meditation may influence how emotionally ambiguous information is processed, regulated, and represented in conscious awareness.” Nielsen, L. and Kaszniak, A. W. Awareness of Subtle Emotional Feelings: A Comparison of Long-Term Meditators and Nonmeditators. Emotion. 6(3), Aug 2006, 392-405.

Tortuous pain of dread fear

“People tend to fear dread risks, that is, low-probability, high-consequence events, such as the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 … I conclude that informing the public about psychological research concerning dread risks could possibly save lives.”, Gigerenzer, G. (2004)
Dread Risk, September 11, and Fatal Traffic Accidents 
Psychological Science 15 (4), 286–287.

3D sun

“Two NASA spacecraft orbiting the Sun together have recorded the first three dimensional images of the Sun and beamed them back to Earth. For the first time, scientists will be able to see structures in the Sun's atmosphere in three dimensions, helping them to better predict space weather that could disrupt Earth's satellites and power grids.” Environmetal News Service, April 24th.

Perceptions

“authors propose a theory according to which the perception of boundaries between events arises from ongoing perceptual processing and regulates attention and memory ..the perception of events depends on both sensory cues and knowledge structures that represent previously learned information about event parts and inferences about actors' goals and plans.” Zacks, JM. Et al. Event Perception: A Mind-Brain Perspective.Psychological Bulletin. 2007 Mar Vol 133(2) 273-293.

Axioms of pleasure

“By utility is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness, (all this in the present case comes to the same thing) or (what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered: if that party be the community in general, then the happiness of the community: if a particular individual, the happiness of that individual.”, Bentham, J. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789.

Mirror neuron

“The mechanism by which humans perceive others differs greatly from how humans perceive inanimate objects … humans have the distinct property of being "like me" in the eyes of the observer … The authors propose that internal simulation mechanisms, such as the mirror neuron system, are necessary for normal development of recognition, imitation, theory of mind, empathy, and language.” Oberman, L. M. and Ramachandran, V. S. The Simulating Social Mind: The Role of the Mirror Neuron System and Simulation in the Social and Communicative Deficits of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Psychological Bulletin. 2007 Mar Vol 133(2) 310-327.

Random factor perception

“This paper reports the results of 2 studies that examine the perceptions of individuals attempting to generate random sequences. It was hypothesized that erroneous perceptions dominate probability judgment. The first study demonstrated that subjects verbalized significantly more erroneous than accurate perceptions when generating sequences of random binary events … but motivation did not increase the number of misconceptions. A basic error concerned subjects' inability to consider events as being independent of each other.” Robert L. et al. (1996) 
Erroneous Perceptions in Generating Sequences of Random Events 
Journal of Applied Social Psychology 26 (24), 2157–2166.

Relative emotinal response

“To examine the relative influence of cultural and temperamental factors on emotional response, we compared the emotional behavior, reports of emotional experience, and autonomic responses of 50 European American (EA) and 48 Chinese American (CA) … EA couples showed more positive and less negative emotional behavior than did CA couples … these findings suggest that the relative influence of cultural and temperamental factors on emotion varies by response component.” ‘Cultural and Temperamental Variation in Emotional Response.’ Tsai, Jeanne L.; Levenson, Robert W.; McCoy, Kimberly. Emotion. 6(3), Aug 2006, 484-497.

Affect and preference memory

“An important influence on our preference toward a specific object is its associations with affective information … the authors used a multistage behavioral paradigm that fostered associations between neutral shapes and affective images … propose that the preference for negatively associated items is a manifestation of a mechanism that produces an inherent incentive for rapidly assessing potentially threatening aspects in the environment.” ‘The Influence of Nonremembered Affective Associations on Preference’. Ghuman, Avniel S.; Bar, Moshe. Emotion. 6(2), May 2006, 215-223.

Building points of coincidence

“People's reactions to coincidences are often cited as an illustration of the irrationality of human reasoning about chance. We argue that coincidences may be better understood in terms of rational statistical inference, based on their functional role in processes of causal discovery and theory revision. We present a formal definition of coincidences in the context of a Bayesian framework for causal induction: A coincidence is an event that provides support for an alternative to a currently favored causal theory, but not necessarily enough support to accept that alternative in light of its low prior probability … Our results indicate that people can accurately assess the strength of coincidences, suggesting that irrational conclusions drawn from coincidences are the consequence of overestimation of the plausibility of novel causal forces” Griffiths,T.L. y Tenenbaum,J.B., Cognition, Vol 103(2) May 2007, 180-226.

Attitude expressions

“… current work examines the processes by which new attitudes are formed and changed and how these attitudes predict behavior… explicit attitudes were shaped in a manner consistent with fast-changing processes, were affected by explicit processing goals, and uniquely predicted more deliberate behavioral intentions. Conversely, implicit attitudes reflected an associative system characterized by a slower process of repeated pairings between an attitude object and related evaluations, were unaffected by explicit processing goals, uniquely predicted spontaneous behaviors, and were exclusively affected by associative information about the attitude object that was not available for higher order cognition.” ‘Understanding Implicit and Explicit Attitude Change: A Systems of Reasoning Analysis’. Rydell, Robert J.; McConnell, Allen R. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2006 Dec Vol 91(6) 995-1008

Red life

“The earliest life on Earth might have been just as purple as it is green today, a scientist claims. Ancient microbes might have used a molecule other than chlorophyll to harness the Sun’s rays, one that gave the organisms a violet hue.” Ker Than
LiveScience, March 10th.

Climate wave heat

“Billions of people across the world face hunger, severe water shortages and displacement as a result of increased temperatures, an international panel of scientists and politicians concluded yesterday.
In its second big report this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that more extreme weather including hurricanes, typhoons, droughts and flooding was to be expected as a direct result of global warming.” Lewis Smith, Times Online.

Sefl expression

“Whereas self-expression is valued in the United States, it is not privileged with such a cultural emphasis in East Asia … This research highlights the importance of the cultural meanings of self-expression and the moderating role of cultural beliefs on the psychological effect of self-expression.” "Express Yourself": Culture and the Effect of Self-Expression on Choice. Kim, Heejung S.; Sherman, David K.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2007 Jan Vol 92(1) 1-11

Exclusion Social

“Social exclusion caused a substantial reduction in prosocial behavior … The implication is that rejection temporarily interferes with emotional responses, thereby impairing the capacity for empathic understanding of others, and as a result, any inclination to help or cooperate with them is undermined.” ‘Social Exclusion Decreases Prosocial Behavior’. Twenge, Jean M.; Baumeister, Roy F.; DeWall, C. Nathan; Ciarocco, Natalie J.; Bartels, J. Michael, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2007 Jan Vol 92(1) 56-66