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Link Feast

Our editor’s pick of this week’s 10 best psychology and neuroscience links.

05 December 2015

By Christian Jarrett

Why Behavioral Economics is Cool, and I’m Not
At Medium, Organisational psychologist Adam Grant – yes he’s a psychologist not an economist –  wonders if psychology doesn’t have a bit of a branding problem.

Jump The Gun and You Will Be Shot Down
At The Psychologist, Stuart Ritchie responds to Oliver James’ letter from the December edition in which he claimed that genes do not influence psychological traits.

Terrorism Science: 5 Insights Into Jihad in Europe
Terrorism is tough to study, but researchers have gleaned insights from the current generation of Islamist extremists. By Declan Butler at Nature.

How Dark is Your Personality? (interactive test)
Do you have a ruthless streak? Psychologists believe the “dark triad” of personality – Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy – might help you succeed in life. To measure your own dark side, the bright folks at BBC Future have put together this test.

Bilingualism, Kevan Jones MP, Talking Therapies and Memorising Art (audio)
It’s the latest episode of BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind, feature studio guest Catherine Loveday (chair of our very own editorial committee).

What If We Could Really Read The Brain? (video)
TEDX talk by Matt Wall. Modern brain-reading technology has come a long way, but it’s still crude and insensitive. What can it really achieve, and what might future brain-reading techniques look like?

How Can We Stop Unconscious Bias?
Uta Frith, one of the BBC’s 100 women of 2015, gives several examples of how our unconscious biases harm women. The first step, she says, is for us to acknowledge we have these biases in the first place.

Are You Introvert or Extrovert? Or An Actual Human?
A column I wrote about the malleability of personality, for WIRED UK.

Woman Who Has Never Felt Pain Experiences It For the First Time
She was burned with a laser, and quite liked the experience, reports New Scientist.

Living With Schizophrenia: ‘Public Perception is Changing, But It’s Still Used As a Term of Abuse’
Artist Alice Evans, who suffers from terrifying hallucinations as a result of schizophrenia, tells Victoria Lambert at The Telegraph that more needs to be done to help.