An ingroup is a social group an individual belongs to, feels associated with, and expresses loyalty to. Common ingroups are people from the same gender, ethnicity, or religion, but also one’s friends, family members, colleagues, or classmates. Ingroups have a large impact on decision-making behavior by the individual: People are inclined to conform to the attitudes and behaviors of ingroup members and tend to privilege ingroup members over outsiders. This effect is strong and even present when an ingroup is artificially created. For instance, the categorization of people into two groups based on a trivial criterion, such as birth date or T-shirt color, is sufficient to establish an ingroup bias in behavior.

Celebrities are not part of our ingroup as they typically belong to a different group than we do. Instead, celebrities are part of a group an individual wants to belong to, a so-called “aspirational group.” They are public figures who, for many, provide a standard of achievement and serve as a role model. Given this, celebrities are of great interest for marketers and they are often used for commercial purposes. Indeed, celebrity endorsement appears to be an effective way to advertise a product, but only if consumers identify the celebrity presenter as having technical knowledge about the advertised product or as being an experienced user of it.

We asked ourselves why fame has such a strong persuasive effect on consumer decision making and measured the brain’s response to celebrity endorsements. Neural activity in a brain region important for positive emotions and the learning of associations indicated that during just one exposure, positive affect was transferred from the celebrity to the product. This positive affect seemed to originate from the retrieval of memories associated with the celebrity. Whether the same mechanism of persuasion underlies the influence of (real) ingroup members on individual behavior is a question we’d like to answer by future research.

Mirre Stallen is a doctoral candidate at the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University.

1) They felt they didn’t have much time left with the older adult and wanted to cherish the remaining time together (rather than spend it fighting).
2) They held stereotypes that older adults are forgetful or cannot change, and therefore, they didn’t get upset with them.
3) They had positive expectations that the older adult would act in a kind manner, so they also acted in a forgiving manner toward the older adult.

These findings are consistent with the way Americans think about relationships—we tend to value our own feelings in a personal way rather than relying on formal patterns of behavior, such as respect. In Asian countries, with Confucian ideals, we might expect respect to play a greater role in behaviors toward the elderly.

Karen Fingerman is the Berner-Hanley Professor in Gerontology, Developmental, and Family Studies at Purdue University.

In our PNAS experiment, we only manipulated the hormone testosterone, and of course, women have less testosterone in their blood and saliva—but perhaps not fundamentally. Women convert most of their testosterone to the female sex hormone estradiol. Now the question is: What does estradiol do to their trust? Soon someone will find out.

Jack van Honk is a professor of psychology at Utrecht University.

Specifically, in our research, we find that people with overtly confident personalities are the ones who respond to the threats by becoming more zealous about their belief (or atheism). They do not become more paranoid, credulous, or broadly superstitious, however. We have some preliminary evidence that, in contrast, it is the people with overtly meek personalities who respond to threats by becoming more paranoid, credulous, and superstitious.

Ian McGregor is a professor of psychology at York University.

First, the test is designed to be a difficult test of skill. That is part of the way we are able to assess people’s underlying attitudes toward their partners—by keeping their conscious mind quite busy with a fast-paced task. However, because it is a difficult task, a small portion of people will do poorly on the task simply because it is too confusing or difficult for them, not because they are likely to break up.

Second, the test predicted break ups over 12 months. That is quite a long time and could give individuals more than enough time to try to strengthen their relationships—particularly if those relationships are still important to them. The test assesses attitudes, but attitudes can change for the better.

If their performance on the test suggested that their implicit attitude toward their partner was growing more negative than positive (suggesting greater risk for break up), I would suggest that they use that feedback as a wake-up call to reinvest in their relationship. This could be as simple as spending more quality time together or treating one another with more kindness and less anger on a day-to-day basis. Small changes like that can make a big difference over time.

If you are interested in taking the test (as part of a follow-up study currently under way), go to my webpage or directly to the survey itself.

Ronald Rogge is a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester.

Our research shows that the qualities of the things we touch—the weight, texture, and hardness of objects—profoundly influence the impressions we form and decisions we make, even about unrelated people and situations. All of that is lost in a world without touch. To some degree, that’s a good thing because these environmental influences can contaminate our thoughts. But of course to another degree, that’s a bad thing because people feel more connected to the things they touch, they are more confident about the impressions they form, and they simply have more information from the act of touching. So I think we will begin to see more touchable devices as the electronic/virtual world evolves, and there really may be something missing from our online experiences until that happens.

Josh Ackerman is a professor of marketing at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

For more than a decade, TechCast has scanned the literature and surveyed 100 experts worldwide to forecast technology breakthroughs and their social impact. We identify trends driving a forecast and obstacles opposing it, summarize other forecasts made by other sources, and have our experts review all this background data to reach their best estimates. Although I think this approach provides the best possible answers to tough questions, we miss the mark by about plus or minus three years for forecasts a decade out, and sometimes a lot more.

For anything beyond two decades out, the sources of error mount dramatically, especially because the world is changing so quickly that present assumptions will soon prove invalid. Our forecasts suggest that most of the big breakthroughs now anticipated—green technologies, alternative energy, artificial intelligence, biogenetic medical care—are likely to arrive well before 2050. In fact, exploding information technology and knowledge are likely to unify the globe into some type of coherent world system between 2020 and 2030 out of sheer necessity. The mounting threats of climate change, energy shortages, environmental collapse, WMDs, terrorism, and other elements of the “Global Megacrisis” are forcing this historic transition, and global gross domestic product will double about 2020, making the present global order unsustainable and demanding a form of “global consciousness.” Our surveys of the megacrisis show that the next decade or two will either see a crucial turning point to a “mature” global society or we are likely to witness the collapse of civilization in major parts of the world.

In sum, 40 years is a very long time given today’s exploding rate of knowledge and change. 2050 will be a very different world, with very different capabilities and interests. Prescient individuals can always gauge the broad outlines of how the world will change, but with such huge uncertainty beyond our known sphere of consciousness, it would better to think of these as “visions” rather than forecasts, much less predictions. The real issue is which of the many possible visions to pursue.

William Halal is an emeritus professor of management, technology, and innovation at George Washington University and the president of TechCast.

But today’s religious apps for mobile phones are largely limited to generic, singular activities—like reading the Bible or identifying holy days. They are targeted at individuals with general religious interests or informational needs. What are needed next are more personalized communication apps that connect individuals with their own local communities of faith and the day-to-day activities of those communities.

Instead of simply looking up a Torah verse, for example, next-generation apps might also allow users to retrieve service times at their local synagogue, communicate with other members of the congregation via a mobile social network, access live streaming or recorded audio/video services, and receive updates and individualized prayers from their rabbi—all on a single cell phone application. Add on the ability to organize events, sign up for classes, and make contributions or tithe directly from a smartphone and voila! You’ve got your very own “church in a pocket” app.

Such all-in-one apps could also be integrated with mobile location-based services (LBS) like Foursquare, which allow users to know when fellow church members are nearby. In the case of a temple or church, the leadership could keep track of how many congregants have arrived for a service or event (perhaps to determine critical mass?) and even identify them by name. Naturally, each community would customize and brand its own app to target its own needs and user base, much in the same way that websites currently do.

Ultimately, the purpose of “church in a pocket” apps are to enable individual faith-based communities to stay connected, expand their base, and serve up “always on” services to worshipers on the go. While the concept of a religious community mobile app may sound like fast-food religion to some, the fact remains that nearly everyone has a cell phone these days, and the appetite for phone-based apps is increasing dramatically.

People want everything else on the go, so why not bring them the church on the corner, too?

Paul Lamb is the head of Man on a Mission Consulting and manages a “Technology & Spiritual Practice” training program for faith-based communities and technologists.

Another possible explanation is that fMRI allows us to capture message processing as it is occurring, which may help circumvent some of the biases associated with retrospective self-report. It is also possible that different types of self-report measures could capture something similar to what we’re seeing in the brain—part of what we are working on now is figuring out whether we can pin down the psychological processes that correspond to this type of brain activity. Over the next few years, we are hoping to build more sophisticated predictive models that continue to take advantage of the best of what we can learn from the brain and from self-report.

Emily Falk will be a professor of communication studies and psychology and a member of the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan beginning this fall.

One problem is defining what we mean by “superstition.” I tend to consider this as practices that reflect beliefs that we can summon or control supernatural powers to influence outcomes. However, there are a whole set of beliefs that do not necessarily lead to actions. For example, a large proportion of highly educated people entertain paranormal beliefs such as telepathy, spirits, and all manner of beliefs that go beyond any natural understanding and do not evoke rituals. That’s why I coined the term “supersense” to reflect a propensity to belief that includes supernatural, superstitious, and paranormal beliefs in the absence of any reliable evidence that replicates to support these suppositions.

A number of survey studies have shown that females typically score higher than males on measures of supernatural beliefs. In contrast, males tend to favor conspiracies, which are not supernatural. One recent study of more than 1,000 Austrian men and women found a correlation between the ratio of the length of the ring finger to the index finger, which is a marker for the amount of the masculizing hormone testosterone you were exposed to as a fetus: Males with a “higher feminized” digit ratio exhibited stronger paranormal and superstitious beliefs, even when controlled for age, education, adult height and weight, and birth length and weight. Shorter feminized digit ratios in women correlated with more superstitious beliefs, as did a woman’s lighter weight at birth.

There is also some evidence that individuals differ in the propensity to see patterns and significance in otherwise meaningless stimuli and events, a tendency called “patternicity” by Michael Shermer. Susan Blackmore demonstrated more than 20 years ago that individuals who have a bias toward patternicity are also more like to score highly on their supersense. More recently, Peter Brugger has demonstrated that the link between patternicity and the supersense is mediated by the neurotransmitter dopamine. Drugs that alter the levels of dopamine shift patternicity, suggesting that there may be a biological basis.

I have also proposed that individuals who rely more on intuitive thinking as opposed to rational analysis—what psychologists distinguish as Type 1 and Type 2 reasoning—are more inclined to their supersense. This has been supported by large-scale studies by Marjaana Lindeman in Finland, who has shown that highly educated adults entertain both Type 1 and Type 2 thinking, but those who rely more on intuition score higher on supernatural beliefs. One interesting issue that we are investigating is whether those who cannot easily inhibit intuitions are more prone to intrusive intuitions that support beliefs.

Finally, Sam Harris has focused on the role of testimony from others and shown that gullibility or the willingness to believe what you are told reflects neural mechanisms of conflict resolution—it is easier to believe what others tell you than reject their claims.

Taken together, we can see how the propensity to our supersense, the ambiguity of information, and the influence of others may make some of us more susceptible to superstitious beliefs than others, even when we have had the benefit of education and science to inform us that such powers do not exist. What’s more, even though there is no scientific evidence for superstitious powers, people benefit from such beliefs and practices in times of stress because the perception that they can do something to influence outcomes is more comforting than accepting that they have no control.

Bruce Hood is director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre and a professor of psychology at the University of Bristol and the author of The Science of Superstition.