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When Decisions Satisfy, and When They Upset
Should I sign that contract? Should I fire that lazy employee? Should I eat lunch at my desk or go out? Business professionals face a daily dose of decisions like these — some that we can change, others that are irreversible. While it may seem safer to make choices we can later revise, a small body of research suggests that people tend to be more satisfied after making unalterable decisions rather than those they can undo. This partly stems from humans’ tendency, demonstrated in psychological research, to overestimate the regret they’ll feel over their decisions.
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Lessons From the Second Biennial Atlantic Coast Teaching of Psychology Conference
This project was supported by the APS Fund for Teaching and Public Understanding of Psychological Science, which invites applications for nonrenewable grants of up to $5,000 to launch new, educational projects in psychological science. Proposals are due March 1 and October 1. In September 2013, the second biennial Atlantic Coast Teaching of Psychology Conference (ACToP) was held in Red Bank, New Jersey. Coordinated by Natalie J. Ciarocco and Lisa M.
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“¡Espera! Permíteme No Pensar en Eso Un Minuto”: ¿Qué Rol Juegan los Procesos Implícitos en la Cognición de Alto Nivel?
Ben R. Newell Universidad de Nueva Gales del Sur, Sydney Originalmente publicado en: Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol.24 (2), 65-70, 2015. Traducción de: Alejandro Franco Correo: alejandro.franco@ipsicologia.com Abstract La creencia de que en algunas situaciones somos mejores al no pensar tiene una resonancia anecdótica y llamativa para nuestra tendencia a seguir la "ley del menor esfuerzo". Pero, ¿es una buena estrategia?
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How Being Laid Off Affects Your Job Prospects
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently sent 330 employees emails letting them know the company—in an effort to control costs as its user base declines—would be eliminating their jobs. And the layoff is small in comparison to other players in the technology world. In July, Microsoft shed 7,800 positions. And Hewlett-Packard is slashing up to 30,000 jobs as part of a massive reorganization plan. There will no doubt be thousands of highly skilled and talented professionals on the job market as the result of downsizing moves like these.
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Confidence Spills Over Across Unrelated Decisions
Research on metacognition, or “thinking about thinking,” has explored important puzzles about how humans monitor and control their thoughts. One of these puzzles is why people’s beliefs don’t match with reality -- such as why, for example, people are often overconfident in their performance on perceptual or memory tasks. New research by Dobromir Rahnev (Georgia Institute of Technology) and his colleagues has identified one possible reason for poor metacognition.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Conceptual Conditioning: Mechanisms Mediating Conditioning Effects on Pain Marieke Jepma and Tor D. Wager Although researchers know that classical conditioning can modify pain responses, the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Participants were conditioned to pair specific shapes with symbolic indicators of a high or low temperature. Participants' skin conductance responses were then measured as they completed a test phase in which the shapes preceded contact heat treatments.