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We’re not like chameleons copying everything everybody does
Yahoo India: It's common for people to pick up on each other's movements - scratching your head, crossing your legs - but we don't copy everything like chameleons, according to a new study. It says people only feel the urge to mimic each other when they have the same goal. "This is the notion that when you're having a conversation with somebody and you don't care where your hands are, and the other person scratches their head, you scratch your head," said Sasha Ondobaka of the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
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Royal Institution’s Christmas Lectures watched by 2.4million
University of Bristol News: The recent Royal Institution’s Christmas Lectures, delivered by renowned experimental psychologist Professor Bruce Hood from Bristol University, were enjoyed by 2.4million viewers over the festive period. Professor Hood, Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre, invited viewers to Meet Your Brain in a demonstration-packed, three-part series of lectures, delivered in the iconic theatre at the Royal Institution between 27 and 29 December and broadcast on BBC Four. Read the whole story: University of Bristol News
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What Is Classical Conditioning? (And Why Does It Matter?)
Scientific American: Classical conditioning is one of those introductory psychology terms that gets thrown around. Many people have a general idea that it is one of the most basic forms of associative learning, and people often know that Ivan Pavlov’s 1927 experiment with dogs has something to do with it, but that is often where it ends. The most important thing to remember is that classical conditioning involves automatic or reflexive responses, and not voluntary behavior (that’s operant conditioning, and that is a different post). What does this mean?
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Why do older people view life in a sunnier light than the young?
Examiner: Why do older people view life in a sunnier light than the young? Have older folks come to terms with loss, change, and the ability to let it go--at least when it comes to body images and family attachments? Are young people more or less attached to family than older people? Is it really the opportunities that existed with lower unemployment statistics between 1945 and 1965 and the cheaper prices of homes, cars, and college education or vocational training that makes the silent generation so much more happier than today's twenty-somethings?
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Seven Steps for Reinvention in 2012
The Huffington Post: I decided not to make any New Year's resolutions for 2012. Resolutions are changes we make based on what hasn't worked. Why not focus on what has worked and create from there? Clinical psychologist John Norcross agrees with this strategy in order to increase the odds for success. For example, if you want to double your first quarter sales compared to last year's first quarter, don't focus on the sales you didn't make. Instead, focus on the sales you did make and why you made them. From there, create action steps based on realistic, attainable goals.
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Searching for the real relationship between money and happiness
The Washington Post: Can money make you happy? An entire quantitative field of study, happiness economics, has grown up around that question. In reading the literature, I came to one inescapable conclusion: Happiness economics makes some academics happy because they can publish conflicting papers that help them earn tenure. Oh, and they’ve boiled down happiness to an equation: Wit = α + βxit + εit. But the real relationship between income and happiness is more nuanced, and measuring people’s true feelings is tricky. For example, when study subjects are asked how happy they think people at different income levels are likely to be, they generally underestimate the happiness of the poor.
