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A Time to Kill
Science: A runaway trolley is about to kill five railroad workers. The only way to stop it is to shove a huge man next to you onto the tracks. Would you kill that man to save five? That is one of the standard moral dilemmas that scientists are using to study how people decide between right and wrong. But is it the best example? When was the last time you faced a runaway trolley? To see how people deal with more realistic choices, Joshua Greene, a psychologist at Harvard University, and his undergraduate student Katie Ransohoff, turned to medicine and public health. Read the whole story: Science
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Put your stress on vacation
Los Angeles Times: Got stress? If you answered no, hooray for you! (And, by the way, what planet are you from?) But if you answered yes (like any normal member of the human race), you're likely heartened by the arrival of vacation season. Just the ticket for a little stress-reduction. And that can have some big payoffs. It can lower your blood pressure, boost your immune system and help you live longer. It may even make you smarter. "A vacation is not a luxury," says Jens Pruessner, an associate professor in the departments of psychology, psychiatry, neurology and neurosurgery at McGill University in Montreal.
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Capacity for Commitment May Start in Early Childhood
MSN Health: The ability of men and women to have staying power and a strong level of commitment in their romantic relationships can be traced back to their early childhood and adolescence, a new study finds. Researchers asked 78 people aged 20 or 21 and their heterosexual partners about their level of commitment to their relationship. The researchers already had data on the participants from when they were aged 2 and 16, including how loving and attentive their mothers were when they were toddlers, and how they dealt with a conflict with a friend as teens.
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Self-affirmation helps you excel in sports
Albuquerque Express: Positive self-talk while playing a sport is likely to improve your performance, researchers say. In fact, the study was born out of an on-field experience of one of the researchers. Back on the high school soccer field, poised to take a crucial penalty kick, sports psychologist Antonis Hatzigeorgiadis recalls: 'I was the captain and never missed those types of shots. Then I had that thought striking me that it was not going to be good. 'I knew I was going to miss,' he recalls, 'and I did miss.' Even then, he could see that his mind had a big effect on his body.
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New study sheds light on ‘dark side of happiness’
The Boston Globe: The “pursuit of happiness’’ has been something Americans have valued ever since the Founding Fathers inserted it into the Declaration of Independence. Yet some psychologists now question whether happiness is, indeed, a worthwhile goal, since new findings suggest the pursuit could actually make us more unhappy. In a review paper published last week in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, researchers define what they call the “dark side of happiness’’: feeling happy all the time can destroy relationships and careers, while avidly pursuing happiness is bound to lead to disappointment. Read the whole story: The Boston Globe
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Why are psychopaths so coldly callous?
The Times of India: WASHINGTON: Psychopaths' willingness to break social norms and lack of remorse may drive them to commit crimes and irresponsible behaviour but their whole orientation may have something to do with a lack of fear, say researchers. "What happens is you're born without that fear, so when your parents try to socialize you, you don't really respond appropriately because you're not scared," says co-author Patrick D Sylvers of University of Washington in a study in journal Psychological Science. Read the whole story: The Times of India
