How geocachers navigate fear in the urban woods
Because geocaches are always hidden out of sight, players often have to behave in out-of-the-ordinary ways to reach them.
On a drizzly Saturday morning in June 2018, I found myself kneeling on the edge of a wooden boardwalk in Melbourne's northern suburbs.
Personality is not only about who but also where you are
What if patience, and maybe other personality features too, are more a product of where we are than who we are?
In the field of psychology, the image is canon: a child sitting in front of a marshmallow, resisting the temptation to eat it.
Heartbeats align during an Islamic ritual, new study finds
Researchers found that the hearts of Sufi devotees harmonized as one during a mystical practice. And this isn't the first study to show heart synchronization between people.
- Anthropologists at the University of Connecticut discovered that the heartbeats of Sufi practitioners synchronized during an important ritual.
- Sufism is a mystical component of Islam that emphasizes coming to know God through direct experience, like trance.
- Other studies have also found that individuals who are closely connected emotionally and socially experience physiological alignment.
Perception of musical pitch varies across cultures
Is the way we hear music biological or cultural?
People who are accustomed to listening to Western music, which is based on a system of notes organized in octaves, can usually perceive the similarity between notes that are same but played in different registers — say, high C and middle C.
Why extreme rituals might benefit psychophysiological health
A new study shows two potential benefits of undergoing a painful ritual.
- A new study examined peoples' objective and subjective indicators of health before, during, and after a painful ritual.
- The results showed that people who underwent the painful ritual reported a greater quality of life and subjective health improvements.
- Painful rituals also seem to have a unique ability to produce "shared physiological alignment" within groups.
