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When It’s An Error To Mirror
In human relationships, mimicry can act as a kind of ‘social glue’ and foster rapport in subtle ways. If, for example, Amy and Ted are engaged in a conversation, Amy might mirror some of Ted’s mannerisms, leading Ted to like Amy more, trust her, and think of Amy as more similar, even though both are unaware that any mimicry took place. All this has been confirmed by much of psychological research, leading to a popular perception (and advice) that imitating is “good for you”. But new research suggests that mimicry may not always lead to positive social outcomes. In fact, sometimes not mimicking is the smarter thing to do.
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Women Who Leave the Workplace: Opting Out or Overlooking Discrimination?
Research indicates that the common American assumption that behavior is a product of personal choice fosters the belief that opportunities are equal and that gender barriers no longer exist in today’s workplace.
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How The Brain Keeps Track of What We’re Doing
“Working memory” is what we have to keep track of things moment to moment: driving on a highway and focusing on the vehicles around us, then forgetting them as we move on; remembering all the names at the dinner party while conversing with one person about her job. Most psychologists explain working memory with a “controlled attention” model: one flexible system that directs the brain’s focus to stimuli and tasks that are important and suppressing the rest. The capacity of working memory, they say, is limited by our ability to attend to only one thing at a time.
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Who Takes Risks?
It’s a common belief that women take fewer risks than men, and that adolescents always plunge in headlong without considering the consequences. But the reality of who takes risks when is actually a bit more complicated, according to the authors of a new paper which will be published in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Adolescents can be as cool-headed as anyone, and in some realms, women take more risks than men. A lot of what psychologists know about risk-taking comes from lab studies where people are asked to choose between a guaranteed amount of money or a gamble for a larger amount.
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Can Feeling Too Good Be Bad? Positive Emotion in Bipolar Disorder
Positive emotions like joy and compassion are good for your mental and physical health, and help foster creativity and friendship. But people with bipolar disorder seem to have too much of a good thing. In a new article to be published in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologist June Gruber of Yale University considers how positive emotion may become negative in bipolar disorder. One of the characteristics of bipolar disorder is the extreme periods of positive mood, or mania. People in the grip of mania also have increased energy, sleep less, and experience extreme self-confidence.
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How Media Can Encourage Our Better Side
Violent media—films, TV, videogames—can encourage aggression, and lots of research says so. But psychologists haven’t spent as much time looking at the ways media with more socially positive content help suppress meanness and prod us toward cooperation, empathy, and helpfulness. When and why might a game or a movie mobilize our better angels and squelch our devils? A review of the literature, including his own work, by psychologist Tobias Greitemeyer at the University of Innsbruck in Austria sorts out those questions and proposes a model to explain the cognitive processes underlying their answers.