Is there anything left to say about Mohandas K. Gandhi that has not already been said? If the sheer volume of writing by and about Gandhi is any indication, the answer is a resounding no. Consider the section of any university library where the books on Gandhi are located. There is, first of all, the works of the very prolific man himself. His Collected Works — autobiography, political treatises, letters, newspaper articles — now run to more than 100 thick volumes. The sheer weight and often contradictory nature of his output is both an archival goldmine and a great challenge for ... Read More
Local TV News Spreads Cancer Fatalism
January 31, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Coming up on Action News at 11: Man arrested in fatal stabbing! Huge winter storm approaches! And in our health segment: Pretty much everything causes cancer, and there’s nothing you can do about it! That’s the troubling subtext viewers seem to be picking up from local television newscasts. Two newly published research papers suggest a regular diet of health coverage provided by your hometown news team may inspire fatalistic beliefs about cancer prevention. By focusing on shocking new studies that reveal a “novel or controversial” potential cause of the disease, local ... Read More
Photos Implant ‘Memories’ of Fictional News Events
November 19, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Remember that botched mission to rescue captured British soldiers in Baghdad during the Iraq War? And how Prime Minister Tony Blair subsequently rebuffed calls for his resignation? If you answered no, it’s for a good reason: The event never happened. But if you answered yes, the photograph of a pensive Blair that accompanies this blog post may be partially to blame. That’s the conclusion of a troubling new study about false memories, which was recently published in the journal Acta Psychologica. It reports a fake news headline is more likely to be accepted as factual if it is ... Read More
Putting Sustainability to Music
November 5, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The tradition of celebrities flitting from cause to cause is a well-engrained meme in the Western pop psyche. But a body of environmentally minded musicians and music industry types, while not abandoning the public face of action, are working to create institutional change behind the scenes. Speaking Friday during the second annual New Noise Santa Barbara conference in California, a collection of businesspeople, artists and a conservation scientist outlined some of the structural improvements, current and speculative, washing over the music biz. The conference is a sort of “South by ... Read More
In Disney Films, Beauty Is Far From Beastly
November 5, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Highly attractive people are smarter, more socially adept and generally superior to the rest of us, and they tend to live happier lives. At least, that’s a widely shared stereotype that psychologists first identified in the early 1970s and recent research suggests is somewhat self-perpetuating. (Having been fawned over from an early age, good-looking people tend to have higher levels of self-esteem, which is an important ingredient in positive life outcomes.) But how exactly does the good-is-beautiful belief get passed down from one generation to the next? Newly published research ... Read More
Golden Age of Newscasts is Now — on NPR
September 30, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Edward R. Murrow is, deservedly, a revered figure in broadcast news. His on-the-scene coverage of the Nazi bombing of London brought the terrifying realities of World War II to American listeners in a uniquely palpable way. Murrow not only personified the idea of a foreign broadcast correspondent: He essentially invented the role. But how do his reports, and those of his CBS colleagues, hold up today? Iowa State University researcher Raluca Cozma addressed that question by comparing two sets of morning newscasts: One produced by CBS radio in the early 1940s, the other produced by NPR in ... Read More
Sex Appeal, Exotic Setting Equal Satisfied Moviegoers
September 17, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
What makes a movie appealing? Is it having a lead actor or actress you can identify with, or an opposite-sex lead you find romantically desirable? Newly published research, which both refutes and confirms conventional wisdom, points strongly to the latter. “Star power does play a relevant role in driving consumers’ evaluations,” Michela Addis of the University of Rome 3 and Morris Holbrook of Columbia University report in the journal Psychology & Marketing. “But this role seems to depend more on attraction than identification, at least with regard to actual age and ... Read More
It Turns Out There Is Accounting for Taste
September 7, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
If I told you my taste in movies, would you be able to tell me what kind of music I listen to? How about my favorite reading material, or taste in television? Peter Jason Rentfrow can — and it’s no parlor trick. The Cambridge University psychologist is lead author of a new study that finds a person’s entertainment choices tend to share certain basic characteristics, which may or may not be immediately obvious. “Individuals prefer genres that share similar content, irrespective of the medium through which it is conveyed,” he and his colleagues write in the Journal of ... Read More
The Scientist and the Journalist Can Be Friends
September 2, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
"With high certainty” isn’t going to top anyone’s list of favorite three-word phrases, but as Nancy Baron notes in her important new book Escape from the Ivory Tower, it could serve as a useful linguistic bridge between scientists, journalists and policymakers. Researchers, she notes, are hesitant to make definitive statements. Aware that knowledge is gained incrementally and always subject to revision, they tend to hedge their answers even to the most direct questions. This can frustrate both reporters, who are looking for facts, and politicians, who want solid information that can ... Read More
The Changing Face of Network Television News
May 17, 2010 • By • 2 Comments
Women and members of ethnic minorities have made huge strides in network television news over the past 20 years, according to a newly published analysis. In the journal Electronic News, Kathleen Ryan of Miami University of Ohio and Joy Chavez Mapaye of the University of Alaska, Anchorage, look at female and minority representation on the three major networks’ news programs during one week in February 2007, and compare it to a similar survey done in 1987. Both the 1987 and 2007 studies examined all the news programming on ABC, CBS and NBC, including the evening news, morning shows and ... Read More
