www.Scientif icAmerican.com/Mind SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND 5

>> POLIT ICAL VIEWS

What Are You Looking At? Conservatives may be less sensitive to certain social cues

Liberals might be more likely than conserva-tives to check out what you are looking at, according to a study published online November 4 in Atten-tion, Perception, and Psychophysics. Experi-ments show that peo-

ple take longer to notice when an object appears if they have � rst seen a face looking in the other direction. Now a team of psychologists and poli-tical scientists at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln report that whereas liberals do just that, conservatives do not. The researchers asked 72 undergraduates to look at a drawing of a face that looked to the left or right of a computer screen and then press a key when a black dot appeared. Despite being told the face would not predict the dot’s location, liberals took 10 to 20 milliseconds longer—about 5 percent—to notice the dot when the face looked away from it instead of toward it, indicating that they had followed the face’s gaze. Conservatives did not—they took the same amount of time regardless of where the face looked.

Study co-author Kevin Smith says one possible explanation is that “liberals are more sensitive to social cues,” such as where someone looks, whereas conservatives value individual indepen-dence. Whatever the explanation, the results bolster the idea that political dispositions depend in part on differences in how people use social information. —Nathan Collins

>> CREATIVIT Y

Laughter Leads to InsightHappy moods facilitate aha! moments

Stumped by a crossword puzzle? Try taking a break to watch a funny TV show. Recent research shows that people in a lighthearted mood more often have eureka moments of sudden inspiration.

Karuna Subramaniam, then at Northwestern University, and her colleagues found that boosting the mood of volunteers increased their likelihood of having an aha! moment that helped solve a word associa -tion puzzle. Those who watched a Robin Williams comedy special did measurably better at the task using insight than those who watched a quantum electronics talk or a scary movie. The games, in which players must � nd a word that connects three seemingly unrelated words, have been used for decades to demonstrate creative problem solving.

In the brain, sudden insight is accompanied by increased activity in the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) prior to solving each prob-lem. The region is involved in regulating attention; in problem solving, it seems to work in con-junction with other brain areas either to stay focused on a par-ticular strategy or to switch to a new one. Subramaniam found with functional MRI that people in a positive mood had more ACC activity going in to the task, which probably helped prepare the brain to � nd novel solutions. Participants who watched anx-iety-producing movies such as The Shining, however, showed less activity in the ACC and less creativity in solving the puzzles. [For more on creativity in the brain, turn to “The Unleashed Mind,” on page 22.]

—Elizabeth King Humphrey

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>> ECONOMICS

Tweeting the Bull or the BearTo predict the stock market, there’s no need to look into a crystal ball. Instead just sign on to Twitter. Researchers at Indiana University collected almost 10 million tweets to measure collective mood in the U.S. on different days. Johan Bollen and his colleagues tracked words indicating six emotions (calm, alert, sure, vital, kind and happy) and measured changes to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. A calm American public, they found, predicted a stock-market rise three or four days afterward—and negative language predicted a drop. —Carrie Arnold

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