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Share the love! Being aroused makes you more likely to send information to other people, study finds
Couriermail.com.au: Dear reader, You're an idiot. And you smell bad. And nobody likes you. And, according to one professor, you're more likely to share this story with your friends if you took those insults to heart. A new study published in Psychological Science suggests that being aroused makes people more likely to share information with others. "Being aroused", in this context, just means any state of agitation, either positive or negative, such as being angry, anxious or amused — anything that gets your pulse up.
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Nice girls finish last; ‘queen bees’ get paid
Central Florida Future: According to the U.S. Department of Education, despite having earned higher college GPAs in every subject, young women will take home, on average across all professions, just 80 percent of what their male colleagues do. What's worse is that a Harvard study found that women who demand higher starting salaries are perceived as "less nice," and thus are less likely to be hired. I cannot believe that, in 2011, women are still judged on how well they can play the nice girl role in order to be hired. The problem is that once you have the job, the nice girl role will not necessarily get you promoted.
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Meditation changes brain activity
Times of India: Landscape artist Jane Anderson struggled with seasonal affective disorder in the winter months. She tried meditation and noticed a change within a month. "My experience was a sense of calmness, of better ability to regulate my emotions," she says. Her experience inspired a new study which found changes in brain activity after only five weeks of meditation training, the journal Psychological Science reports. But Anderson, who did this research as an undergraduate student, together with a team of University of Wisconsin-Stout faculty and students, wanted to know if there was a change in brain activity after a shorter period.
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To Prevent False IDs, Police Lineups Get Revamped
NPR: In a small room at police headquarters in Dallas, a police officer and the eyewitness to a minor crime recently sat down together to consider six photographs in a photo lineup. Eyewitness identifications like this happen every day in America, and on the surface, it is a straightforward transaction. The witness looks at the pictures. The witness picks a person from the photos. Or the witness doesn't. But for decades, psychological scientists have worried that the traditional way police departments have conducted these photo lineups was flawed and was landing many innocent people in jail. There was a better way, they argued, and police departments needed to change.
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It’s A Duel: How Do Violent Video Games Affect Kids?
NPR: Scientists have long clashed over whether violent video games have an adverse effect on young people. Indeed, the conclusions of different groups of researchers are so contradictory they could give a tennis umpire whiplash. The Supreme Court recently overturned a California ban on violent video games. The court said that video games, even offensive ones, were protected by the First Amendment, and that there wasn't clear evidence that playing games such as Grand Theft Auto and Postal really harmed people. So what explains the vehement disagreements among scientists about the effects of these games?
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7 Reasons Your Brain Can’t Spot A Liar
The Huffington Post: Think you're adept at calling someone's bluff? Convinced you can spot a liar from halfway across the room? You're probably wrong, says a recent study published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest. According to the research, led by psychologist Aldert Vrij of the University of Portsmouth in the UK, several factors contribute to our inability to tell when we're being deceived. Have you fallen victim to one (or more) of them? Find out all 7 reasons here: The Huffington Post