Reflected glory
PsyBlog covers a study that explored the phenomenon of 'reflected glory' where sports fans will psychologically associate themselves with their team more closely if they are successful, but will distance themselves if the team loses. The post discusses a classic 1976 study that looked at the 'basking in reflected glory' effect: In the first of three experiments they compared what people

The art of CT
New Scientist has a gallery of wonderful images from radiologist Kai-hung Fung who makes awesomely beautiful pictures from CT scans. The brain image (pictured) is particularly beautiful, it is labelled: This image looks directly down through the top of the patient's head. The complex network of arteries and veins in the brain can be seen in shades of dark blue and the skull base i

Encephalon 78 saunters in
The 78th edition of the Encephalon psychology and neuroscience writing carnival has recently appeared on the Providentia blog with the latest in mind and brain writing from the blogosphere. A couple of my favourites include a piece on The Mousetrap about the self in the eyes of the founding father of cognitive psychology - Ulrich Neisser, and a post that review

2009-11-27 Spike activity
Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

The consequences of faking it
I've just caught a short video by the brilliant behavioural economist Dan Ariely who explains the surprising effect of wearing fake goods on the likelihood of us cheating and for on much we suspect that others are being dishonest. Ariely is riffing on one of his recent studies that was led by psychologist Francesca Gino. It'll shortly appear in Psychological Science but can read the full text online as a