Psychology in Brief: 5 Things We Didn’t Know Last Week

Coffee shops boost creativity–Quit smoking trick–Alzheimer’s drug hope–Weight-loss improves brain function–Save dog or person, you decide.


Five things we didn’t know last week from the world of psychology:

1. Coffee shops boost creativity


Is it possible coffee shops make people more creative because of the noise levels? For abstract thinking, maybe:

2. Quit smoking trick


You can further motivate yourself to quit smoking by seeing what you might look like in 20 years time. The study found:


“…providing concrete and realistic information about an individual’s potential future and using the aged face of a game avatar as a way to get the quit-smoking message across to college-age students could be very effective.”


3. Alzheimer’s drug hope


New drug hope for Alzheimer’s which has shown promise in mice:

4. Weight loss improves brain function


If anyone carrying a few extra pounds needs further motivation to lose it then here it is. People who are obese tend to show deficits in memory for events, but this is reversible:

5. Would you save a dog over a person? Depends?


Given some weird confluence of events that meant you could only save the life of a person or that of a dog, which would you choose?


Person right?


You might be surprised to learn that if it was their dog and the person was a foreign tourist, 40% would save their dog.


Here’s a graph showing how the relationship with the dog and the person changed their choice:





The authors rightly caution that:

Yes, if really faced with this dilemma, the number choosing their dog would be 100%.


I’m joking.

Probably.


About the author


Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology.


He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004. He is also the author of the book “Making Habits, Breaking Habits” (Da Capo, 2003) and several ebooks.