Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Paintings, Poems: You See Forest, I See Trees

July 31, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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Are you apprehensive about abstract art? Are you frequently vexed by free verse? New research suggests this difficulty may reflect the way you process information—specifically, whether you zero in on the details or the big picture. It finds that, when it comes to comprehending “ambiguous, complex and abstract stimuli,” forest-focused folks are better than their tree-centric counterparts. “When people verbalize their thoughts and analyze their reasons, they focus on reasons that are accessible in memory, plausible, and reportable,” writes a research team led by University of ... Read More

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Misinformation in TV Drama Can Gain Credibility

October 10, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Our beliefs about the world are shaped by many factors. The courses we took in college. The lessons we learned from our families. And, of course, the prime-time courtroom drama we watched a couple of weeks back. Newly published research suggests nuggets of misinformation embedded in a fictional television program can seep into our brains and lodge there as perceived facts. What’s more, this troubling dynamic seems to occur even when our initial response is skepticism. That’s the conclusion of a study published in the journal Human Communication Research. It asserts that, ... Read More

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Curses, FOIA’d Again

March 17, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

In one of his first acts the day he settled into office last January, Barack Obama issued a memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act, the 1966 federal law requiring the disclosure of most public documents that has been variously applied by every administration since. Bush-era Attorney General John Ashcroft famously interpreted the law to suggest agencies should err on the side of denying records requests that might interfere with national security, privacy or any of FOIA's nine exemptions. The Department of Justice, he said, would defend agencies' decisions to withhold material "unless ... Read More

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