Frontiers | Science news

Science news post list

160 news posts in Psychology

Psychology

28 Sep 2021

Deep dive into global Twitter posts reveals possible drop in negativity towards Covid-19 pandemic

By Colm Gorey, Frontiers science writer Image: Sattalat Phukkum/Shutterstock.com An in-depth analysis of more than 120m Twitter posts across the globe has shown that users’ perception of the Covid-19 pandemic became less negative as it has progressed. In a paper published to Frontiers, its authors found a significant decrease in negativity in countries which rolled out extensive vaccination programs, such as the US, the UK, and Canada. The devastation and distress brought by the Covid-19 pandemic to millions of lives goes without question, but trying to gauge an entire planet’s changing perception of the disease over time can seem an almost impossible task. Yet with some estimates showing that almost 4.5bn people now use some form of social media online, researchers are tapping into this vast resource in an attempt to create a clearer picture of how the perception of this life-changing event has shifted since early 2020. Now, publishing their findings in Frontiers in Psychology, scientists from Vanderbilt University in the US and the Federal Technological University of Paraná in Brazil have tapped into one enormous dataset of Twitter posts (tweets) to show that the number of negative posts about Covid-19 is dropping, especially in countries which rolled out […]

Psychology

11 Jun 2021

Editor’s Choice Award for Evolutionary Psychology – January to March 2021

Professor Peter K. Jonason, the Specialty Chief Editor of the Evolutionary Psychology specialty section (Frontiers in Psychology), is delighted to announce the winners of the Editor’s Choice Award for January to March of 2021. The two articles selected have received notable attention within the community and offer important insights from the field of evolutionary psychology to better understand behavioral responses within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Psychology

11 Mar 2021

Could coloring our steaks blue help reduce the world’s insatiable demand for meat?

By Prof Charles Spence, University of Oxford Image: SciePro/Shutterstock Blue has become an increasingly popular color in drinks and confectionary. Now, Prof Charles Spence of the University of Oxford asks what impact tainting meat blue would have in nudging consumers toward selecting a healthier and more sustainable diet? Have you ever heard about the infamous blue steak study? According to a story that has been circulating in the academic literature for 70 years, a group of people were once invited for a dinner of steak, fries, and peas. The lighting was so dim that it was impossible for the guests to discern the food’s true color. During the meal, the lighting was returned to normal suddenly revealing that the steak had been colored blue, the peas red, and the fries green. Many of the guests apparently immediately ran off to the bathroom to be sick. While this anecdote has appeared in numerous scientific papers over the last half century, typically to illustrate the sometimes aversive influence of (blue) food coloring, it turns out that it may be nothing more than that – a mere anecdote. According to a review of blue foods that I published recently in Frontiers in Psychology, […]