Sam Sommers

In yet another chapter of a continuing debate, the State of Oregon announced last week that its public schools must discontinue the use of Native American nicknames and mascots. The Board of Education gave state schools until 2017 to stop using team names such as "Indians," "Chiefs," "Braves,"...

Just how often do people objectify women? According to recent research, we're so used to treating women as sex objects that we can do it even when standing on our heads.

In a study published in this month's issue of Psychological Science, Belgian and American psychologists took advantage...

The story of the tragic shooting death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin continues to unfold. Each day seems to bring with it a new revelation, whether an eyewitness coming forward for the first time or the release of a new audio recording. And a great deal of attention is being...

One of the many reasons why studying human nature makes for such an intriguing pastime (or career, for that matter) is the frequency with which there's divergence between the factors that we think influence our decisions and those that actually shape how we see the world around us.

Take order,...

It remains one of the most influential memories of my time as a college professor. I was in my office over the summer, reading through written comments from the back of my teaching evaluations (yes, we do read those). While this was a large class with close to 100 students,...

With Valentine's Day upon us, there are some interesting conclusions to note from soon-to-be-published research regarding that most 21st-century of romantic developments: the dating website.

In this past weekend's New York Times Sunday Review, psychologists Eli Finkel and Benjamin Karney provide a preview of their article to appear in this...

It's official. Empirical research has finally demonstrated that which many of us instinctually knew all along: men are better parkers than women.

This news won't come as a surprise to many. Ask men and women to rate their own parking abilities, and men are more generous. Moreover, just think about...

What makes someone attractive to you?

Specific physical features? A particular personality type? A certain indefinable quality of character or depth of soul? All reasonable answers, sure, but there's an additional response you probably didn't give -- one that behavioral science suggests you should at least consider. Another critical influence...

We're smack dab in the middle of self-help season. Websites are running their annual "How to Make Your Resolutions Stick" stories; bookstores are devoting front-and-center display space to the topic. And yet, just three weeks into 2012, our personal wish lists for self-improvement are already fizzling. Many of us are...

There's an old tongue-in-cheek line about going to see a fight and a hockey game broke out. Well, Monday night TV viewers tuned in to watch a presidential debate and an episode of Maury broke out.

If you haven't seen (or, more aptly, heard) the clips in question yet, here's...

As we turn our calendars to 2012, it's worth taking a moment to remember a critical, yet too-often overlooked ingredient in the recipe for self-improvement: context.

As I explore in my new book, Situations Matter, context has the power to shape our most basic behaviors and our most...

Political pundits, campaign consultants, and exit pollsters can ask all the questions they want regarding how voters are making up their minds this election cycle. But when you get right down to it, our impressions of the candidates are also driven by forces we're not aware of-and even if we...

Reality's rarely as cut-and-dried as we assume it to be. It's not only beauty that's subject to the eye of the beholder. Just ask Rick Santorum.

I remember back to my Intro to Psychology course as a college freshman. My professor was lecturing on the topic of persuasion and he...

By now millions have watched and shared the Youtube video of Riley, the spirited 4-year-old who's sick of pink and wants toy companies everywhere to know that girls can like superheroes too:

Why has this clip spread like wildfire? Well, our viral videos almost always have something to tell us about who we are as a society:

We're a people that enjoys a good dancing baby or animal. We -- or at least those Americans among us -- think anything said by a child with a British accent is adorable. We recognize that there are norms that govern the expression of emotion, and we're intrigued by those who fly right by these norms, even when the double rainbow does, indeed, surprisingly go all the way.

And Riley? Well, we like Riley for an even simpler reason: because she's right. And because she has the proverbial cojones to point out to the rest of us how things really are.

Riley's rant isn't just about colors or toys. It's also about books, fairy tales, and TV shows. Halloween costumes. Birthday party themes. Baby shower gifts. The different adjectives that parents use to describe their newborns just minutes after birth.

If you have a daughter and you're paying attention, you have your own stories to add. In my case, a 5-year-old telling me that she wanted to be either Peter Pan or a knight for Halloween because the female protagonists from the movies she watches "don't do anything interesting." One viewing of the original Star Wars DVD, a Princess Leia wig, and some plastic-light-saber-inflicted damage to my desk lamp later, and I can testify that the purported relationship between testosterone and swordplay is tenuous at best.

And that's just the thing: our gendered consumer culture is but the tip of the iceberg. For every website with separate links for Boys' Toys and Girls' Toys, there's a corresponding assumption made regarding sex and aptitude. For every fast-food drive-thru attendant that needs to know the sex of my kids in order to pick the "right" Happy Meal toy, there's an underlying belief in some sort of immutable gender difference.

Don't minimize Riley's point by writing her off as "spunky" or "cute." Don't dismiss her trenchant social analysis as making a mountain out of a molehill simply because it was recorded at a toystore. It is a mountain she's railing against.

Because behavioral science has now shown us that many of the gender differences we habitually chalk up to biology or evolution aren't as set in stone as we assume. That men being from Mars and women from Venus makes for good book copy, but doesn't do justice to just how context-dependent gender differences are when it comes to aptitude, preference, and social behavior.

Men are inherently more aggressive than women? Sure, when male and female research participants play a violent video game, the men play more aggressively. But convince them that no one is recording their performance -- that is, let them play anonymously -- and the women become just as aggressive.

Women are hard-wired to be pickier when screening potential mates? Yep, in speed dating studies where a circle of men rotates around a circle of women, the women find fewer prospective dating partners to whom they're attracted. But switch things up so that the women rotate instead? That is, turn the traditional dating paradigm on its head and make women the approachers and men the approachees? Suddenly, men are just as picky.

Males have more natural aptitude for math? Indeed, give even high-achieving men and women a standardized math test and the women tend to underperform. But that gender difference goes away in a single-sex testing room. Or with assurances that the test has been found to be free from gender bias.

This is why Riley's pissed off. And why you should be too. As my new book (and its title) spell out: situations matter and context transforms us. So it goes with matters of sex and gender. Even if it sometimes takes the tiniest of pundits to remind us.

Like this post? Interested in the book (and how context shapes not only gender difference, but a wide range of aspects of daily life)? Then check out the website for "Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World" (now available!). You can also follow Sam on Facebook here and on Twitter here. Book trailer video below:

We love to look at good-looking people.

Hardly an earth-shattering conclusion, I know. But it's a well-documented one: Attractive people grab our attention. Even babies spend more time gazing at attractive faces, suggesting to some that hardwiring in our brains automatically diverts attention to the good-looking others around us, much...

You've been lied to. Or, at the very least, misled. It's simply not true that everything you need to know about life you learned in Kindergarten.

Because I remember kindergarten. And as much as I loved Mrs. Peerless's class, even after completing her rigorous academic curriculum, the 5-year-old me still...

I've long believed that those of us who make a living studying human nature should be as well-versed in popular culture as we are well-read in the scientific literature. Admittedly, this belief stems in part from my desire to rationalize a late-night tendency to catch up on Daily Show episodes...

Ever wonder what the face of love looks like? Just look in the mirror.

No, this isn't some Mr. Rogers-ish, Stuart Smalley-esque effort to get you to love yourself for who you really are. Though by all means, feel free to do so.

Rather, what I mean is...

As Thanksgiving draws to a close, we have unambiguously crossed the starting line of the holiday season. It's a time of year that predictably brings with it a variety of familiar visitors: greeting cards, gift lists, family get-togethers, and intolerable mall traffic, to name just a few. But there's yet...

EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all about it: New study finds 70-year-olds have worse memory than 20-year-olds!

No, I'm not trying to invoke the wrath of social science skeptics and budget-slashing politicians everywhere. Yes, I realize this reads like a potential case study in how researchers waste time and money exploring the...