Science News for Writers

kurtbubna.com A "control-freak" perfectionist, a.k.a., the other-directed perfectionist as described in this research. Link: How to handle the control freak We all know someone who is a perfectionist.  In fact, it may be someone who drives you crazy, or, maybe you're driving yourself crazy with your own perfectionism.  On the positive side, most successful men and women, sometimes described as are type A personalities,  have a streak of perfectionism in their make-up. According to this new research out of the University of Kent in England, there are three types of perfectionists, one of which has a dark side.  The question researched is whether a character expects their own life and work to be perfect, or, whether they expect the lives and work of others to be perfect.  This is a distinction I had never considered until I read this study. By the way, earlier research posted on SNfW shows that perfectionism is a major factor in many su...

Source:   Nature Ancient-genome study finds Bronze Age ‘Beaker culture’ invaded Britain.  ( Click to read Nature article ) Copper Age Iberians 'exported' their culture  -- but not their genes -- all over Europe " The Neolithic people who built Stonehenge almost disappear and are replaced by the populations from the Beaker culture from the Netherlands and Germany ." Prehistoric Iberians 'exported' their culture throughout Europe, reaching Great Britain, Sicily, Poland and all over central Europe in general. However, they did not export their genes. The Beaker culture, which probably originated in Iberia, left remains in those parts of the continent. However, that diffusion was not due to large migrations of populations that took this culture with them.  These are the conclusions of an international study in which the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) was involved. Its findings, published in the journal Nature, indic...

Credit: © jedi-master / Fotolia "Our findings show that false memories of committing crime with police  contact can be surprisingly easy to generate, and can have all the same  kinds of complex details as real memories," says psychological scientist  and lead researcher Julia Shaw of the University of Bedfordshire in the UK. The human animal is complex in some very surprising ways.  There are people who become known to police for confessing to crimes they couldn't have committed, even becoming serial confessors. According to this study, over three quarters of study participants came to believe they committed an offense through the techniques used to interview them.  The implication is that an interviewee can be lead to believe he committed a crime and to confess, even though they are completely innocent of a crime that never occurred. Something to think about. Here's the report with a link to the complete study. *  *  *...

behappy When it comes to our brains, there's no such thing as normal There's nothing wrong with being a little weird. Because we think of psychological disorders on a continuum, we may worry when our own ways of thinking and behaving don't match up with our idealized notion of health. But some variability can be healthy and even adaptive, say researchers, even though it can also complicate attempts to identify standardized markers of pathology. "I would argue that there is no fixed normal," says clinical psychologist and senior author Avram Holmes of Yale University. "There's a level of variability in every one of our behaviors." Healthy variation is the raw material that natural selection feeds on, but there are plenty of reasons why evolution might not arrive at one isolated perfect version of a trait or behavior. "Any behavior is neither solely negative or solely positive. There are potential benefits for both, depending on t...

Whole-brain analysis results for the action localizer scan in yellow (hand action execution versus rest), and for the mentalizing localizer in blue (false belief stories versus false photograph stories). The action localizer activated the cortical motor system robustly, and the mentalizing localizer led to activations in the previously defined mentalizing network. How the brain listens to literature When we listen to stories, we immerse ourselves into the situations described and empathize with the feelings of the characters. Only recently has it become possible to find out how exactly this process works in the brain. Roel Willems and Annabel Nijhof have now succeeded using an fMRI* scanner to measure how people listen to a literary story.  Everybody immerses themselves in stories in their own way. However, due to technological limitations, how we comprehend literature has only previously been studied at a group level without looking at individual differences. Wille...

http://anglozine.com Probably every writer of English struggles with spelling and word form.  There, their and they're is one nightmarish trap that so many writers fall prey to. When you ponder the amazing history of our language, you'll realize that we struggle with an olio of Celtic, German, Scandinavian, Pig Latin, French, Hindi, Vietnamese, Arabic, Swahili, Amharic, Martian, Valley Girl, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Yiddish, vague and rare crossword and scrabble words, all tossed with a smattering of guttural grunts and squeaks, held loosely together with a Latin grammar that has absolutely nothing to do with the structure of English.  Thank God that clicks and pops are more or less out of vogue. If you think I'm kidding, just watch this wonderful series on the History of English .  The origination of the word "shit" is especially illuminating. No wonder spelling is in the eye of the beholder.  Don't get me started on grammar. Early on in my wri...

Cristobal Young In a word, no.  In a study of financial osmosis, researchers at Stanford find that the wealthy are less likely to move than the general population, indicating that lowering taxes to attract the affluent is a losing proposition.  However those at the bottom of the economic ladder are far more likely to relocate, sort of economic Okies. To a writer, these tidbits add to an overall understanding of why people do things, and understanding that can add to the richness of your prose.  Or poetry, too, I suppose. Here's the report with a link, as always, to the full study if you're so inclined. *  *  *  *  * Study dispels myth about millionaire migration in the US " Our research indicates that 'millionaire taxes'  raise a lot of revenue and have very little downside. " The view that the rich are highly mobile has gained much political traction in recent years and has become a central argument in debates about whe...

Source:  livescience.com "There are many ways to measure personality, but psychologists have mostly given up on trying to divide humanity neatly into types. Instead,  they focus on personality traits."  ( click to read an excellent article by  by Stephanie Pappas on Live Science ) This is the question at the core of fiction:  where does a character's personality come from and how does it work?  Sure, there are works where the characters are ill defined and show no growth over the course of the story.  Lots of violence, plenty of sex, and you can't remember a thing about it ten minutes later.  Annoyingly, films and book of this ilk sell revoltingly well.  Happily there are enough works around where a character gains definition over the course of their story and show growth.  (I can't watch or read works where the characters are as shallow as the writer.) One of my personal favorite acts of fiction are the Lord Peter...

Happy Valentine's Day, aka, Ash Wednesday, the day we traditionally clean out the fire place after having burned the Yule Log and a few of Santa's Elves, if not the jolly old Elf himself.  In doing so, we honor a fourth century Christian martyr who was either beheaded, burned at the stake, crucified or simply ignored to death (depending on which version you believe) for having performed weddings against the express wishes of the Roman Emperor.  Sheesh, what a grouch. So, as we experience another blatantly commercial holiday designed to impoverish us all and our descendants unto the Nth generation, here's a neat bit of info about love. Enjoy.  Happy V.D. *  *  *  *  * Love and fear are visible across the brain instead of being restricted to any brain region In the field of affective neuroscience, rivalling theories debate whether emotional states can be regarded as an activity of only certain brain regions. According to a new doct...

Source: jezebel.com If you want to know if someone is a narcissist all you have to do is ask. According to a new study, narcissists are so into themselves that they don't see their narcissism as a problem, so they will proudly own up to it. ( Read more ) Narcissism linked to sexual assault perpetration in college Almost 20 percent of college men have committed some kind of sexual assault, and 4 percent have committed rape, according to a study published by University of Georgia researchers who were examining the link between different kinds of narcissism and the perpetration of sexual assaults. The study found a strong connection between pathological narcissism and sexual assault perpetration through a survey of 234 male university students, mostly in their first and second years of college. Its findings related to perpetration rates were mostly consistent with previous studies, said the study's lead author Emily Mouilso, a clinical assistant professor in...

John Wayne in the 1953 movie "Hondo".  Wayne's particular ambling walk is one of his trademarks, one that Wayne attributed to his meetings with Western legend Wyatt Earp as well as movie studio coaching . Link between walk, aggression discovered The way people walk can give clues to how aggressive they are, a new exploratory study has found. The work found that the exaggerated movement of both the upper and lower body indicated aggression. The researchers from the Department of Psychology assessed the personalities of 29 participants, before using motion capture technology to record them walking on a treadmill at their natural speed. The study found that the exaggerated movement of both the upper and lower body indicated aggression. Lead researcher Liam Satchell said: "When walking, the body naturally rotates a little; as an individual steps forward with their left foot, the left side of the pelvis will move forward with the leg, the left sho...

moviemavenspeaks.wordpress.com We all know someone or of someone who loves to make themselves the butt of their own jokes.  For example, I have a friend who says he's working on an autobiography entitled "If Failure Makes You Smarter, Why Ain't I a Genius?"  ( Rim Shot .) There are also many examples of professional comedians whose act is pure self-defeating self-deprecation.  Bob Hope and Rodney Dangerfield come to mind, though there are many others.  So is making fun of one's self a sign of psychological insecurity, or, a sign of a healthy personality?  Beats me, I flunked the MMPI.    ( Rim Shot .) Well, here's a bit of preliminary research on what the researchers call self-defeating humour (sic).  *  *  *  *  * Self-defeating humor promotes  psychological  well-being, study reveals A "t endency to employ self-defeating humour is indicative of  high scores in psychological well-b...