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Michele W. Berger
Science News Officer
mwberger@upenn.edu
Psychology
Spicy foods: To eat, or not to eat
Cold months come with fiery foods—but is that heat good for you? Penn’s Paul Rozin and Nitin Ahuja, along with a registered dietician, chime in to explore its effects on mind and body.
Procrastinating on climate change
Joseph Kable, Baird Term Professor of Psychology, studies how people make (or don’t make) decisions. He calls the circumstances around climate change a “perfect storm of features” that’s leading us to not act.
What do opponents of genetically modified foods really know about the science?
The study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, found that the strongest critics actually know less—a pattern similar for gene therapy, but not for climate change.
Telemedicine today, and the future of virtual health care
From the Connected Care Center central hub for ICU patients, to telegenetics, Penn practitioners are looking to the future of convenient care.
Celebrating science
Eight Penn faculty share their favorite general interest books about science.
In negotiations, one strategy leads to better economic gains, but worse relationships
Behavioral scientist Nazli Bhatia found that aggressive but retracted offers known as ‘phantom anchors’ can improve outcomes—but only when employed with finesse.
Bigger brains are smarter, but not by much
Using a large dataset and controlling for a variety of factors, including sex, age, height, socioeconomic status, and genetic ancestry, Gideon Nave of the Wharton School and Philipp Koellinger of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam found that people with larger brains rated higher on measures of intelligence, but only accounts for two percent of the variation in smarts.
Social scientists trade academic silos for shared workspace
Faculty and grad students in the new Social and Behavioral Sciences Initiative have access to two state-of-the-art labs, grants, and a collaborative environment aimed at creating a vibrant research community.
Social media use increases depression and loneliness
Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram may not be great for personal well-being. For the first time, an experimental study shows a causal link between time spent on these social media and increased depression and loneliness.
New scholars named to promote research into the influence of gender on health
Melanie Kornides of the School of Nursing, Jennifer Lewey of the Perelman School of Medicine, and C. Alix Timko of Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia are pursuing research that examines the role of sex and gender on health, supported by the Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health program.
Media Contact
In the News
Newsweek
What UFO ‘Encounters’ Can Tell Us About Fake News and Climate Change Denial
School of Arts and Sciences doctoral candidate Kate Dorsch’s research on the tensions between UFO witnesses and scientists speaks to contemporary challenges to confirmation biases.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
Racially-charged Situations Topic at Black History Month Event
Howard Stevenson of the Graduate School of Education gave a lecture on racial literacy and outlined steps for coping with racially charged conversations and situations.
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