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Psychological Science Behind Stress
Feeling a little stressed out? Whether it’s impending final exams, a business presentation, family troubles or just your daily commute stress consumes many of us. Check out this video about the human stress response featuring Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University. As we've evolved, the human stress response has saved our lives. Today, we turn on the same life-saving physical reaction to cope with intense, ongoing stressors - and we can't seem to turn it off. Sapolsky reveals just how dangerous prolonged exposure to stress can be in clips from the National Geographic documentary, "Stress: Portrait of a Killer."
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Torture – Too Severe for Empathy
An interrogation practice is classified as torture when it inflicts severe physical or mental pain. But the people who determine what defines severity aren’t experiencing that pain so they underestimate it. A study in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science found support for the empathy gap, a psychological phenomenon in which people in one emotional state cannot appreciate or predict the state of another who is distressed and in pain. To someone who is full, starvation doesn’t seem that bad.
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How a bottle of hand sanitizer can make you conservative
The Toronto Star: Just standing next to a bottle of hand sanitizer brings out the conservative in people, a Cornell University study has found. And just looking at a reminder to wash your hands can bring out the sexual puritan, according to the research in the journal Psychological Science. “It is weird,” allows study co-author Erik Helzer, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Psychology. “These results suggest that everyday reminders of cleanliness (“Employees must wash hands before returning to work” signs or hand sanitation stations) may have unintended effects on people’s social attitudes.” Read the whole story: The Toronto Star
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Too Much Trauma
Newsweek: First Japan was hit by a triple whammy. The country of 127 million has just endured one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history, followed by a shockingly voracious tsunami. Together, these two brutes of nature wreaked havoc on the towns and villages of the northern Japanese coastline. If only the damage had stopped there. When the deadly combo of earthquake and tsunami breached the protective barriers and engulfed one of Japan’s oldest nuclear-power plants, a nuclear nightmare began, one that at this point has shown no clear signs of ending. Then last Thursday a 7.4 quake hit, knocking out power for more than 3 million, and again shaking the country to its core.
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Play, Parents, and Children’s Stress
Like mother like daughter…unfortunately this may also apply to depression. A study published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science found that children whose mothers had been depressed at some point and whose parents were hostile when playing with them had higher stress. Experimenters measured three-year-old children on how upset they became by stressful situations (e.g. a stranger approaching to talk to them, giving them a toy box with keys that don’t fit in the lock, or giving them an empty box wrapped up like a present). Half an hour later, the experimenter measured the children’s cortisol levels, a stress hormone.
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Study: Regrets? Women have a few, particularly in romance
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: When you look at the couch and the stomach-scratching blob lying there, do you occasionally wish you’d committed to sharing your life with someone else? When it comes to regrets — particularly among women — romance is the most common source of that nagging anxiety, according to a new study by a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Some 370 adults across the United States — ranging in age from 20 to 80 — were asked in a telephone survey to list their biggest regrets, and the most frequently mentioned issue had to do with romance, said the study’s author, Neil Roese, a professor of marketing at Northwestern.
