Below, we’ve posted titles and a brief quotation from some of our favorite non-Situationist situationist blogging during October 2009 (they are listed in alphabetical order by source).
* * *
From 3 Quarks Daily: “Lard Lesson: Why Fat Lubricates Your Appetite”
“When you’ve spent the weekend splurging on greasy fast foods, your bathroom scale isn’t alone in reeling from the impact. Your brain does, too. New research shows just how saturated fat tricks us into eating more and elucidates the evolutionary basis for the propensity for poundage in developed nations. Our brain physiology, it seems, is glaringly out-of-date in the modern world.” Read more . . .
From Brain Blogger: “How Culture Shapes Our Mind and Brain”
“Most people would agree that culture can have a large effect on our daily lives — influencing what we may wear, say, or find humorous. But many people may be surprised to learn that culture may even effect how our brain responds to different stimuli. Indeed, until recently, most psychology and neuroscience researchers took for granted that their findings translated across individuals in various cultures. In the past decade, however, research has begun to unravel how cultural belief systems shape our thoughts and behaviors.” Read more . . .
From BPS Research Digest: “Young children’s moral understanding more sophisticated than previously thought”
“[…] In judging moral responsibility, we adults focus almost exclusively on intention rather than outcome. Stated starkly, the person who deliberately attempts to kill an innocent, but fails, is judged as more evil than the person who accidentally kills an innocent. Now researchers have a taken a fresh look at how these moral processes develop in children.” Read more . . .
From BPS Research Digest: “The speed of free will”
“Crudely speaking, our actions can be divided into those that are automatic and driven by the environment and those that are initiated volitionally, as an act of will. In an intriguing new study, Todd Horowitz and colleagues claim to have recorded the relatively sluggish time taken for free will to be enacted.” Read more . . .
* * *
For previous installments of “Situationism on the Blogosphere,” click here.