Publications by authors named "M J Maekelae"
Article Synopsis
- Teleological reasoning is when people think there’s a purpose in things, even when there isn’t one.
- A study with 45 people showed they often accept wrong explanations that seem to have a purpose, and this is linked to how quickly they respond and how their pupils change size.
- The research suggests that errors happen because the brain is doing a lot of work to process information, rather than just making quick decisions.
Article Synopsis
- Scientists did six studies with 663 people to understand how motivation and ability affect cognitive effort.
- They found that the Need for Cognition, which is how much someone likes thinking, helps with effort in certain tasks, but not all.
- They discovered that if someone feels more mental effort, they are likely to do worse on logical reasoning tests.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has affected all countries with more than 100 million confirmed cases and over 2.1 million casualties by the end of January 2021 worldwide. A prolonged pandemic can harm global levels of optimism, regularity, and sense of meaning and belonging, yielding adverse effects on individuals' mental health as represented by worry, paranoia, and distress.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of people to drastically change their social life habits as governments employed harsh restrictions to reduce the spread of the virus. Although beneficial to physical health, the perception of physical distancing and related restrictions could impact mental health. In a pre-registered online survey, we assessed how effective a range of restrictions were perceived, how severely they affected daily life, general distress and paranoia during the early phase of the outbreak in Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Israel, Norway and USA.
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