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Being selfish makes us happy – so long as we avoid the guilt
The Telegraph: Although we are taught the benefits of kindness and altruism, it seems we are happiest when simply told to pursue our own self-interest. Researchers found the key to contentment is feeling we have no choice but to be selfish. In contrast, the study, carried out by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania, found that those who actively choose a selfish path usually have to battle with guilt. They speculated that because we're taught as children that 'sharing means caring', if we make a decision out of self-interest, we often feel bad for prioritising ourselves over others. But that frequently means we forego the things we know will make us happy.
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Police Prejudice Is Not What You Think
Police photo provided by Shutterstock. Many police departments have a problem with prejudice — it’s a common assumption supported by empirical research. But when a team of psychological scientists led by Juliette Gatto of Blaise Pascal University, France, took a close look at prejudice in new police recruits, officers with a year of training, and a control group from the general population, they discovered unexpected nuances. The results were published in the European Journal of Social Psychology.
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Does True Love Wait? Age of First Sexual Experience Predicts Romantic Outcomes in Adulthood
The timing of a person’s first experience with sexual intercourse predicts the quality and stability of their romantic relationships in young adulthood.
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Immune Response May Link Social Rejection to Later Health Outcomes
Data from healthy adolescents indicate that recent exposure to targeted rejection activates the molecular signaling pathways that regulate inflammation.
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Testing Can Help Students After All
The Wall Street Journal: In recent years, testing has gained new importance in public schools, much to the chagrin of its critics. But several recent scholarly articles bolster the case that testing can help students learn. Testing has long been known to facilitate later recall. But psychologist Shana K. Carpenter, in surveying the recent scholarly literature, found “robust benefits” from testing on students’ ability to apply their learning in different contexts, which is presumably the point of school.
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Preferences influence choices we make
Asian News International: We come to place more value on the options we chose and less value on the ones we rejected be it choosing between presidential candidates or household objects, researcher say. One way of explaining this effect is through the idea of cognitive dissonance. Making a selection between two options that we feel pretty much the same about creates a sense of dissonance. Re-evaluating the options after we've made our choice may be a way of resolving this dissonance. This phenomenon has been demonstrated in numerous studies, but the studies have only examined preference change shortly after participants make their decision.