Two notable pieces on BPS research digest

I've found myself reading the British Psychological Society Research Digest Blog more and more. There's a brisk flow of brief write ups of psychology research, focussed on peer-reviewed publications. I used to get there from the Research Blogging feed. (This is a cool aggregator of blog posts on peer-reviewed research, which you should check out if you're not already aware of it.) But I ended up there so often I've subscribed to BPS in its own right.

Here are two recent articles well worth looking at (had I but world enough and time, I'd consider blogging both of the papers they refer to):

(1) Recent research suggests that people who volunteer for psychology experiments / surveys are generally more stable and outgoing than those who don't. We need better recruiting strategies to get after the sulking neurotics.

(2) It also seems that self-perception of how well you are doing something impacts on your assessment of others who you are observing. So don't just try to impress folks - have them check you out while they're doing something well.