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Bipolar Disorder: The Drawbacks of Excessive Positive Emotion
The Epoch Times: Too much positive emotion in the wrong context can act negatively on people’s health, according to a new article in the August edition of Current Directions in Psychological Science journal. Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, is a psychiatric condition characterized by mood swings in which sufferers alternate between periods of depression and mania, for example extreme self-confidence, irritability, increased energy, and less sleeping. Psychologist June Gruber at Yale University examined the extreme positive emotions experienced by people in remission from bipolar disorder in a series of different contexts.
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Rose-colored glasses may help love last
Los Angeles Times: If Cupid wanted to improve his game with science, he'd shoot first, then hand out rose-colored glasses with instructions attached: To be worn when viewing your relationship and your partner's personality or body. For best results, keep using well after "I do." Remove carefully at your own risk. Psychologists have long known that new love can be blind and new lovers delusional. Research has shown that newlyweds exaggerate their partner's good qualities, forget the bad ones, rate their own relationship with annoying superiority and so on. But newer research tantalizingly suggests that this myopia is good for more than driving your single friends crazy.
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Can we change our moods with meditation?
Examiner: Can we change our moods through meditation? Yes, according to a recent study. In the late 1990s, Jane Anderson was working as a landscape architect. That meant she didn't work much in the winter, and she struggled with seasonal affective disorder in the dreary Minnesota winter months. She decided to try meditation and noticed a change within a month. "My experience was a sense of calmness, of better ability to regulate my emotions," she says.
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Red pill or blue bill: Who cares? Getting to choose is the best part
National Post: Life is about making choices, from the mundane (Should I eat a Kit Kat for breakfast?) to the momentous (Should I accept this new job?). Though we agonize over some decisions, researchers have found that we generally like having choices. And after we choose something, we tend to like it more. However, a new study examining the experience of choice, suggests that it’s not just about the selections — it’s about the selecting. Simply having the possibility to choose is pleasurable.
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Shock Study: U.S. Flag Only Boosts GOP
U.S. News & World Report: Just a brief exposure to an image of the American flag shifts voters, even Democrats, to Republican beliefs, attitudes and voting behavior even though most don't believe it will impact their politics, according to a new two-year study just published in the scholarly Psychological Science. What's more, according to three authors from the University Chicago, Cornell University and Hebrew University, the impact had staying power.
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Power Makes the Hypocrite Bold, Smug and Brazen
Forbes: We’ve all had the experience of listening to someone in a position of power rail against the moral ineptitude of others. Turn on the news on any given day and you’re likely to see someone moralizing about family values, for example. Most of us listen to these diatribes and wonder if those doing the judging would fare well under judgment—though we strongly suspect they would not. A study published in the journal Psychological Science confirms those suspicions. Researchers investigated whether people in positions of power that hold high standards for others actually live up to those standards themselves.
