If you're looking to lose weight, it's okay to think about eating your favorite candy bar. In fact, go ahead and imagine devouring every last bite - all in the name of your diet.

A new study led by Social and Decision Sciences' Carey Morewedge shows that when you imagine eating a certain food, it reduces your actual consumption of that food. This landmark discovery changes the decades-old assumption that thinking about something desirable increases cravings for it and its consumption.

Read the full article.    Read the NY Times article.    Watch Morewedge on ABC News. 

The world was riveted as WikiLeaks.org began dumping classified U.S. State Department cables onto the Internet.
 

Documents revealed thus far have ranged from embarrassing to inflammatory.  Kiron Skinner, associate professor of social and decision sciences and director of the Center for International Relations and Politics, has a unique view on the uproar.

"WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange and others argue that making these documents public creates an openness about the practices of the United States. Others argue that sources are compromised," said Skinner.
 

Read the full article.
 

Skinner also recently wrote two opinion pieces for CNN.com:
 

WikiLeaks no favor to historians.
Leaked documents can't tell the whole story.

Producer Tommy Oliver's movie Kinyarwanda needed the right mixture of people to do the story - and its subjects - justice.
 

The film takes place in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. It tells the true stories of people who crossed lines of hatred to protect one another.  "It's really a story about hope, perseverance and religious tolerance in the midst of something terrible," said Oliver (HS'06).
 

The story is an official selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
 

Read the full article.