Past Articles by Alix Spiegel
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Big Sibling's Big Influence: Some Behaviors Run In The Family Psychologists have long known that children often model their behavior on the actions of parents or peers. But science has only recently begun to measure the influence of siblings. An older brother's or sister's behavior can be very contagious, it turns out — for good and for bad. |
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Big Sibling's Big Influence: Some Behaviors Run In The Family Psychologists have long known that children often model their behavior on the actions of parents or peers. But science has only recently begun to measure the influence of siblings. An older brother's or sister's behavior can be very contagious, it turns out — for good and for bad. |
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Big Sibling's Big Influence: Some Behaviors Run In The Family Psychologists have long known that children often model their behavior on the actions of parents or peers. But science has only recently begun to measure the influence of siblings. An older brother's or sister's behavior can be very contagious, it turns out — for good and for bad. |
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Boston Blasts A Reminder Of 'The Fragility Of Life' Psychologists have used the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and other tragedies to track the arc of recovery from incidents like the marathon bombing. Such tragedies make many people think about their own vulnerability. |
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Boston Blasts A Reminder Of 'The Fragility Of Life' Psychologists have used the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and other tragedies to track the arc of recovery from incidents like the marathon bombing. Such tragedies make many people think about their own vulnerability. |
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Would Angry Teens Chill Out If They Saw More Happy Faces? Since most of the faces we encounter are emotionally ambiguous, we're forced into interpretations. And in the case of troubled teens, the perception of hostile faces all around can lead to aggressive behavior. In an experiment, researchers tried to retrain the way those kids interpreted faces. |
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Would Angry Teens Chill Out If They Saw More Happy Faces? Since most of the faces we encounter are emotionally ambiguous, we're forced into interpretations. And in the case of troubled teens, the perception of hostile faces all around can lead to aggressive behavior. In an experiment, researchers tried to retrain the way those kids interpreted faces. |
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Mining Books To Map Emotions Through A Century Anthropologists find that the use of "emotional" words in all sorts of books has soared and dipped across the past century, roughly mirroring each era's social and economic upheavals. And psychologists say this new form of language analysis may offer a more objective view into our culture. |
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Mining Books To Map Emotions Through A Century Anthropologists find that the use of "emotional" words in all sorts of books has soared and dipped across the last century, roughly mirroring each era's social and economic upheavals. And psychologists say this new form of language analysis may offer a more objective view into our culture. |
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Pediatric Organization Endorses Same-Sex Marriage For Its Benefit To Children The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement on Thursday supporting marriage rights for same-sex couples. The group says it did a review of the scientific literature, and found that children of same-sex couples do every bit as well as the children of heterosexual couples. |
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New Voices For The Voiceless: Synthetic Speech Gets An Upgrade For those who rely on technology to speak, there are a limited number of voices. "Perfect Paul" sounds robotic, and "Heather" can seem too old for some. Now, a researcher is using sound samples from people who have never been able to speak to create new, personalized voices for them. |
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New Voices For The Voiceless: Synthetic Speech Gets An Upgrade For those who rely on technology to speak, there are a limited number of voices. "Perfect Paul" sounds robotic, and "Heather" can seem too old for some. Now, a researcher is using sound samples from people who have never been able to speak to create new, personalized voices for them. |
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New Voices For The Voiceless: Synthetic Speech Gets An Upgrade For those who rely on technology to speak, there are a limited number of voices. "Perfect Paul" sounds robotic, and "Heather" can seem too old for some. Now, a researcher is using sound samples from people who have never been able to speak to create new, personalized voices for them. |
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To Spot Kids Who Will Overcome Poverty, Look At Babies Researchers say that the heartbeats and breathing of babies may help identify the kids most likely to struggle with poverty later on. Biology matters, the scientists say, but so does baby's relationship with Mom. |
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To Spot Kids Who Will Overcome Poverty, Look At Babies Researchers say that the heartbeats and breathing of babies may help identify the kids most likely to struggle with poverty later on. Biology matters, the scientists say, but so does baby's relationship with Mom. |
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To Spot Kids Who Will Overcome Poverty, Look At Babies Researchers say that the heartbeats and breathing of babies may help identify the kids most likely to struggle with poverty later on. Biology matters, the scientists say, but so does baby's relationship with Mom. |
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Why Even Radiologists Can Miss A Gorilla Hiding In Plain Sight   An attention researcher wanted to find out how radiologists would fare in a version of a famous study called the Invisible Gorilla study. He found that 83 percent of the radiologists failed to spot an image of a gorilla on slides they were told to inspect for cancer. It's just one more example of how when you ask someone to perform a challenging task, their attention can narrow and block things out. |
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Why Even Radiologists Can Miss A Gorilla Hiding In Plain Sight An attention researcher wanted to find out how radiologists would fare in a version of the famous Invisible Gorilla study. He found that 83 percent of the radiologists failed to spot an image of a gorilla on slides they were told to inspect for cancer. It's just one example of how, when people are asked to perform a challenging task, their attention can narrow and blocks things out. |
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No Mercy For Robots: Experiment Tests How Humans Relate To Machines  To understand how social rules affect the interactions between humans and machines, scientists re-created a famous psychology experiment using robots. What they found is that if robots are nice to us, we're nice to them. If they're not, we "punish" them. |
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No Mercy For Robots: Experiment Tests How Humans Relate To Machines To understand how social rules affect the interactions between humans and machines, scientists re-created a famous psychology experiment using robots. What they found is that if robots are nice to us, we're nice to them. If they're not, we "punish" them. |
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Shootings Leave Sandy Hook Survivors Rethinking The Odds The probability that an individual will experience a school shooting may be low. But when the improbable happens to you, where do you find comfort? |
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Shootings Leave Sandy Hook Survivors Rethinking The Odds The probability that an individual will experience a school shooting may be low. But when the improbable happens to you, where do you find comfort? |
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Weekend Vote Will Bring Controversial Changes To Psychiatrists' Bible A vote this weekend by a small group of academics could result in changes to several entries in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Doctors may no longer be advised to avoid diagnoses of depression after the death of a loved one, and Asperger's syndrome may be folded into the spectrum of autism. |
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Weekend Vote Will Bring Controversial Changes To Psychiatrists' Bible A vote this weekend by a small group of academics could result in changes to several entries in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Doctors may no longer be advised to avoid diagnoses of depression after the death of a loved one, and Asperger's syndrome may be folded into the spectrum of autism. |
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Give And Take: How The Rule Of Reciprocation Binds Us Scientists say that whether tipping waiters or trading Christmas cards, we're programmed to reciprocate when we receive a gift. But the rule of reciprocity can also complicate politics and medicine. |
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Give And Take: How The Rule Of Reciprocation Binds Us Scientists say that whether tipping waiters or trading Christmas cards, we're programmed to reciprocate when we receive a gift. But the rule of reciprocity can also complicate politics and medicine. |
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Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning For the most part in American culture, intellectual struggle in school children is seen as an indicator of weakness, while in Eastern cultures it is not only tolerated, it is often used to measure emotional strength. |
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Jersey Shore Storm Survivors Face Uncertain Future Some 100 evacuees from towns like Seaside Heights are now staying at a Red Cross shelter on the New Jersey mainland. They don't know where they will live, or what they will do, or what tomorrow will bring. |
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Charming, Cold: Does Presidential Personality Matter? Early on in American history, before radio and television, charisma wasn't particularly useful, one scholar says, since most decisions were made behind closed doors. Not so today. But how much difference do personality characteristics and charisma make? |
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How Politicians Get Away With Dodging The Question  In political debates, candidates frequently avoid uncomfortable topics by diverting the conversation to an unrelated strength. Many politicians hire debate coaches who have perfected this technique, called "the pivot." So why do these dodges usually evade our cognitive radar? A psychologist explains. |
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Teachers' Expectations Can Influence How Students Perform Teachers' expectations about their students' abilities affect classroom interactions in myriad ways that can impact student performance. Students expected to succeed, for example, get more time to answer questions and more specific feedback. But training aimed at changing teaching behavior can also help change expectations. |
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Why We're Happy Being Sad: Pop's Emotional Evolution   Every Top 40 hit in 1965 was in a major key and had a fast tempo. In 2009, more than half of the Top 40 songs were in a minor key. Has there been a shift in the emotional content of music in the past five decades, and why are we drawn to sadness and ambiguity in music? |
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Can We Learn To Forget Our Memories? Our capacity to forget is as important, and certainly as interesting, as our ability to remember. But can we train ourselves to suppress certain memories, or the meaning we attach to life events? |
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Would Judge Give Psychopath With Genetic Defect Lighter Sentence? A new study suggests using the term psychopath adds an average of five years to criminal sentences. But once a biological explanation was included, the length of the sentence dropped. In other words, our sympathy for the idea that biology might be responsible for criminal behavior is powerful. |
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When Your Family Member Does The Unthinkable In the wake of mass murder, the families of victims must navigate a complicated emotional landscape. But so, too, must the families of those charged with the crimes. Among the questions such families must grapple with are troubling ones about their own responsibility. |
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Can Science Plant Brain Seeds That Make You Vote? Politics has been a profession ruled by gut instinct, gurus and polls. But over the past 15 years, the primary method of scientific advance - the randomized controlled study - has been wheedling its way into politics. Bit by bit, it's challenging a lot of the conventional wisdom that dominates current political campaigns. |
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Small Change In Reading To Preschoolers Can Help Disadvantaged Kids Catch Up Researchers say that changing what 4-year-olds see and think about when a book is being read can improve kids' reading skills later on. The key: Focus their attention on the words instead of the pictures. |
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To Predict Dating Success, The Secret's In The Pronouns A psychologist says he can predict whether two people will end up on a date by analyzing their language style and use of certain words. His research on language can also help explain power dynamics between people. |
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Pediatricians: More Patients Want To Change Their Gender The March issue of the medical journal "Pediatrics" features an editorial looking at Gender Identity Disorder in Children. NPR's Alix Spiegl tracks the rise of awareness about Gender Identity Disorder and how the editorial might effect how frequently the disorders are treated. |
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More Children Struggle With Gender Identity Disorder The March issue of the medical journal Pediatrics features an editorial looking at gender identity disorder in children. Pediatricians apparently are seeing more young patients who express an interest in changing their gender. |
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A Fresh Look At Antidepressants Finds Low Risk Of Youth Suicide A fresh analysis finds no increase in suicide among young people taking Prozac. The results add a wrinkle to the long-running debate over the safety of the medicines for the treatment of depressed young people. |
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When It Comes To Depression, Serotonin Isn't The Whole Story The antidepressant Prozac selectively targets the chemical serotonin. When the drug was introduced in the 1980s, it helped solidify the idea in many minds that depression was the result of a chemical imbalance. But the real story is far more complicated. |
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What Vietnam Taught Us About Breaking Bad Habits In the 1970s, a sizable number of U.S. servicemen in Vietnam self-identified as heroin addicts. But when they returned stateside, the number of these soldiers who continued their addiction was surprisingly low. Why? Turns out a massive disruption in their environment and routine played a big role in helping them change their behavior. |
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Taj Hotel Staff Were Mumbai's Unlikely Heroes  Why did workers of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel risk - and sometimes, lose - their lives to save their guests during the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India? The system used by the hotel's owners to select and reward employees may have had something to do with it. |
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Heroes Of The Taj Hotel: Why They Risked Their Lives When a Mumbai hotel was besieged by terrorists in 2008, something extraordinary happened: Workers didn't flee. They stayed behind to help save guests at the risk of their own lives. What could possibly explain it? A new study attempts to answer that question. |
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For Creative People, Cheating Comes More Easily "It's all about telling stories," says the author of a new psychological study, "so creative people are likely to be able to tell themselves better stories, which would allow them to cheat more on the one hand, but not feel worse about it on the other." |
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Why Do We Give? Not Why Or How You Think New findings in the science of charity reveals some counter-intuitive results. For instance, people will give more money to a single suffering person than to a population of suffering people, and also give more when some type of physical discomfort - for example, running a marathon - is involved. |
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For The Dying, A Chance To Rewrite Life In his work with the dying, a psychiatrist asks patients to write a formal narrative of their life - a document they can pass on to whomever they choose. He's noticed that the stories people tell about themselves as they face death are often very different than the stories they tell at other points. |
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Why Cleaned Wastewater Stays Dirty In Our Minds Would you drink reused sewage water that had been declared safe? No? You're not alone. Engineers say processing wastewater to make it clean and drinkable can provide a plentiful source for places where water is in short supply. But the public often balks at the thought. The reason, experts say, is a phenomenon called psychological contagion. |
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Can Therapy Help Change Sexual Orientation? A debate over the value of conversion therapy has been raging in psychological circles for more than a decade. Two men who underwent the therapy, with vastly different results, share their story. |
