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Our pick of the week’s best psychology and neuroscience links.

15 October 2016

By Christian Jarrett

Do Men and Women Really Have Different Personalities?
Personality profiles appear to reveal consistent (if subtle) differences between men and women – but are they meaningful? I attempted to untangle a knotty and controversial question for BBC Future.

Inside Psychology’s ‘Methodological Terrorism’ Debate
A seemingly obscure debate about etiquette contains some big questions about the future of social science. Jesse Singal for New York’s Science of Us.

Elite Opinion vs the Wisdom of Crowds: The Intelligentsia’s Tendency to Get Things Wrong
Personality psychologist Adam Perkins reflects on Brexit, for Quillette Magazine.

The Link Between Psychosis and Violence Is Not Clear Cut
One of the big problems for research in this area, writes Andy Watt for The Conversation, is separating schizophrenia from the effects of the many other difficulties that people suffering from schizophrenia often have.

How To Get Ahead In The Office – With Help From Team GB’s Psychologists
Dr Chris Shambrook and his colleagues have helped turn Britain’s rowing team into a medal factory. Could the same methods help you win gold at work, asks Imran Rahman-Jones at The Guardian.

Weekly Digest #30: Learning and Attention
The latest links round up from the Learning Scientists: “Today, we provide 5 eclectic resources discussing how attention can affect learning, from discussing what we know about attention in adolescence to leveraging distraction as an advantage.”

Psychology Suggests That Power Doesn’t Make People Bad—It Just Reveals Their True Natures
“The more power people get, the freer they feel to be their authentic selves,” writes Michael Kraus for Quartz.

Policymakers Seduced By Neuroscience to Justify Early Intervention Agenda
Experts warn that ‘artfully packed’ ideas from the US downplay poverty and inequality in the lives of problem families and are being conscripted as ‘moral arguments’ to take children into care. Patrick Butler in The Guardian.

How Sex Rules Our Dreams?
Gritty, emotional, smelly and dirty: new evidence supports Freud’s long-debunked theory that sex fuels our dreams. Patrick McNamara in Aeon.