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Deux soirées à guichets fermés
Sud Ouest: Le centre culturel de Montignac affichait complet, vendredi et samedi, pour la deuxième mi-temps du duo Jean Bonnefon et Daniel Chavaroche. Les deux artistes étaient de retour pour présenter leur nouveau spectacle « Y'a pas que le rugby dans la vie ». Ils ont à nouveau emmené le public à Bellecombe, mais cette fois-ci non pas sur le terrain de rugby, mais dans la vie des gens de ce village. Read the whole story: Sud Ouest
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Good Manners are Bad for You
Express: Psychologists say that although being polite helps get us through awkward social situations, it can have hidden perils in emergencies. They found that our tendency to be vague and evasive in order to spare someone’s feelings can cause confusion when a person’s safety is at risk. Examples include a nurse failing to spell out a doctor’s potential error to avoid embarrassment, or an air controller lacking assertiveness with a pilot in trouble. The study, published in the journal Current Directions In Psychological Science, said we resort to “politeness strategies” when forced to point out someone’s mistake or bad choice.
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Worried? Get Your Scrub On
Global Handwashing Day (October 15, 2011) may be on to something! If you’re feeling guilty or doubtful, simply washing your hands or taking a shower may make you feel better. In a literature review published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, Spike W.S. Lee and Norbert Schwartz concluded that “people can rid themselves of a sense of immorality, lucky or unlucky feelings, or doubt about a decision” by cleaning themselves. In one study, scientists found that people asked to judge the moral wrongdoing of others saw them as worse when exposed to an unkempt room or bad odor than when sitting in a clean room.
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<em>Better Angels</em>, Believe It or Not
Two World Wars, the Cold War, and the rise of terrorism must make the past century one of the most violent in the history of our species, right? Not according to Harvard psychologist and APS member Steven Pinker, who argues in his new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, that violence is declining. According to Pinker, we are actually living in the most peaceful era in human history. Watch Pinker’s TED talk on the myth of violence to learn more about why Pinker thinks our “better angels” are winning out. You can learn more about Pinker’s by reading coverage from The New York Times and Time.
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World Series Psychology
The Red Sox won’t be participating in this year’s World Series, but it’s safe to say that the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry is here to stay. That makes those teams’ fans an obvious choice for studying rivalry and aggression. Read Wray Herbert’s summary of what happened when Princeton University social neuroscientists studied which neurons light up when loyalists and rivals experience moments of victory or defeat. In other baseball-related psychology, fans aren’t the only ones whose aggression at the baseball stadium has become the subject of psychological research.
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How to Learn by Believing In Yourself
If you want to be smarter, the first step might be to believe that you can get smarter. In a study that will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, Jason S. Moser and his colleagues found that people who believe they can learn from their mistakes are more likely to do so. In the study, participants were asked to identify the middle letter of a five-letter series like “MMMMM” or “NNMNN.” This task may seem simple, but task is repeated several times in a row, people tend to make mistakes and feel bad about it.