-
Social psychologist Brenda Major wins mentor award, launches scholarship
For her lifetime achievements in teaching, advising and encouraging students and colleagues in the field of social psychology, UC Santa Barbara’s Brenda Major has received the Association for Psychological Science 2024 APS Mentor Award. “Advising and mentoring students is the part of being a professor that I have most enjoyed,” Major said. “I believe that good mentorship is one of the most important assets one can have on the path to achieving one's goals.” ... To honor Major’s mentoring and contributions to science, along with those of her husband and colleague, Jim Blascovich, the department has established the Brenda Major and Jim Blascovich Fund for Social Psychology.
-
A User’s GuideTo Midlife
Midlife, typically defined as ages 40 to 60, is an inflection point. It’s a time when our past behaviors begin to catch up with us and we start to notice our bodies and minds aging — sometimes in frustrating or disconcerting ways. But it’s also an opportunity: What our older years will look and feel like isn’t set in stone, and there’s still time to make adjustments to improve health and well-being going forward. “Things that you do or things that happen in midlife can have long-term effects on the later life,” said Margie Lachman, a psychology professor at Brandeis University who specializes in middle age. “So it’s a really important period for paying attention to your body.” ...
-
Is that chatbot smarter than a 4-year-old? Experts put it to the test.
Laura Schulz has spent her career trying to unravel one of the most profound human mysteries: how children think and learn. Earlier this year, the MIT cognitive psychologist found herself baffled by her latest test subject’s struggles. ... “One thing that seems to be really important for natural intelligence, biological intelligence, is the fact that organisms evolved to go out into the real world and find out about it, do experiments, move around in the world,” said Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley.
-
What ‘Inside Out 2’ Teaches Us About Anxiety
At the end of “Inside Out,” the 2015 Pixar movie about the emotional life of a girl named Riley, a new button appears on the console used to control Riley’s mood. ... So he dug into the scientific research and spoke with Dr. Damour and Dacher Keltner, an expert on the science of emotion and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, who also worked on the first movie. Eventually, Mr. Mann’s team decided that Anxiety was motivated by love for Riley, just like Joy was.
-
Quit Being a Cynic at Work. It’s Holding You Back.
We don’t want to be friends with our co-workers. We don’t want to help out with that project. We don’t trust the CEO…or our boss…or that guy in accounting. Have we taken our cynicism at work too far? In some ways, our bad attitude makes sense. Many of us made work our church, only to end up laid off, burned out or underpaid. Now we check out, do less, gossip and snark. It isn’t getting us anywhere good, according to Jamil Zaki, a Stanford University psychology professor who runs the school’s social neuroscience lab.
-
Adolescent Anxiety Is Hard to Treat. New Drug-Free Approaches May Help
Adolescence is a remarkable period of development and learning, a time when youths explore and adapt to changes in their social worlds and begin to form a sense of who they are and hope to be. It is a time when they first demonstrate a dramatic adaptability to the unique cognitive, emotional, physical, social and sexual demands placed on them as they transition from dependence on their parents or caregivers to relative independence. It is also, unfortunately, a time when the emergence of most mental health problems peaks.
