Moral hypocrisy is an antisocial behavior familiar to most of us in which people tend to judge their own moral transgressions more leniently than the exact same transgressions when committed by others. Yet, until recently, the origin of this bias was not known. Northeastern University researchers Piercarlo Valdesolo and David DeSteno have now found that at heart, the mind is just as sensitive to our own transgressions, but that bias in favor of protecting the self actually grows out of cognitive rationalization processes. The research is discussed in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. [continue reading…]

Stimulant medications such as Ritalin have been prescribed for decades to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and their popularity as “cognition enhancers” has recently surged among the healthy, as well.

What’s now starting to catch up is knowledge of what these drugs actually do in the brain. In a paper publishing online this week in Biological Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology researchers David Devilbiss and Craig Berridge report that Ritalin fine-tunes the functioning of neurons in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) — a brain region involved in attention, decision-making and impulse control — while having few effects outside it. [continue reading…]

How children respond to the smell of alcoholic beverages is related to their mothers’ reasons for drinking, according to a new study from the Monell Chemical Senses Center. When asked to smell both the odor of beer and an unpleasant odor and then indicate which they liked better, children of mothers classified as ‘Escape drinkers were more likely than children of Non-escape drinkers to select the unpleasant odor over beer.

“Children’s responses to odors provide us with a window into their emotions, says study lead author Julie Mennella, PhD, a Monell biopsychologist. “When given a choice between beer and pyridine – the smell of rotten eggs – children of mothers who drink to relieve tension and worry choose pyridine as smelling better. That’s pretty powerful.

In the study, which appears in the journal Alcohol, 145 children between the ages of 5 and 8 years were presented with seven pairs of odors. One of the odors was always beer; the others were bubblegum, chocolate, cola, coffee, green tea, pyridine, and cigarette smoke. For each pair, the children indicated which odor they liked better. [continue reading…]