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Why Clingy People Feel Colder
TIME: An icy stare may do more than just chill your heart metaphorically — it can literally change the way you perceive ambient temperature, making a room feel several degrees colder. This cooling effect is most pronounced in people who tend to be anxious in their relationships, new research finds. For the study published in Psychological Science, psychologist Matthew Vess of Ohio University recruited 56 adults online. Participants took a test that examined their so-called attachment style, basically whether they felt comfortable in their relationships with others or whether they were more anxious and avoidant.
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Can You Make Yourself Smarter?
The New York Times: Early on a drab afternoon in January, a dozen third graders from the working-class suburb of Chicago Heights, Ill., burst into the Mac Lab on the ground floor of Washington-McKinley School in a blur of blue pants, blue vests and white shirts. Minutes later, they were hunkered down in front of the Apple computers lining the room’s perimeter, hoping to do what was, until recently, considered impossible: increase their intelligence through training.
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Unhappiness Is in the Eye of the Beholder
Science: A smile and a frown mean the same thing everywhere—or so say many anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists, who for more than a century have argued that all humans express basic emotions the same way. But a new study of people's perceptions of computer-generated faces suggests that facial expressions may not be universal and that our culture strongly shapes the way we read and express emotions. The hypothesis that facial expressions convey the same meaning the world over goes all the way back to Charles Darwin.
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Born This Way
New York Magazine: A few weeks before the 2008 election, Democratic strategists were running out of ideas for how to help Al Franken. His race against incumbent Minnesota senator Norm Coleman was a stubborn one: Even after some of the country’s highest ever per capita spending, the contest remained close, with a small number of undecided, seemingly unbudgeable voters. The job of pollsters in these situations is to figure out who the undecided actually are and what could make them move. Often, they focus on demographics (playing to older suburban women) or issues (talk of school reform).
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Association for Psychological Science, SAGE Launch Clinical Psychological Science
Association for Psychological Science’s new journal opens new field of science WASHINGTON (April 23, 2012) – The Association for Psychological Science and SAGE announce the launch of Clinical Psychological Science, a new peer-reviewed journal focused on publishing advances in clinical science and providing a venue for cutting-edge research across a wide range of conceptual views, approaches, and topics. This is the APS’s fifth scholarly journal, joining Psychological Science, Current Directions in Psychological Science, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, and Perspectives on Psychological Science.
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Niceness Is at Least Partly in the Genes
What makes some people give blood and bake casseroles for their neighbors, while others mutter about taxes from behind closed blinds? A new paper published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science finds that part of the answer—but not all—may be in their genes. The hormones oxytocin and vasopressin are thought to affect how people behave toward each other. For example, lab tests have found that people play nicer in economic games after having oxytocin squirted up their nose. “This is an attempt to take this into the real world a little bit,” says Michael Poulin, of the University at Buffalo.
