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Save the Nerves for the Night Before
Four days left, 4 more psychological science highlights: Counting down to the Olympic Opening Ceremony, with research insights on sports and performance. #4. In Olympic competition, the margin between winning the gold and sitting in the stands often comes down to fractions of a second. Olympic athletes will be doing everything they can to gain even the slightest competitive edge. Researchers have found that feeling tense the night before a game could actually be part of gaining that edge. Recent research conducted at Northwestern University investigated whether feelings of tension play a part in swimming performance.
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Silly Sports Rituals? Think Again
Five days left, 5 psychological science highlights: Counting down to the Olympic Opening Ceremony, with research insights on sports and performance. #5. Have you seen Michelle Jenneke’s prerace routine? How about Stephanie Rice before she swims? When a event begins, there is no telling how it will end. How can players cope with the unpredictability Olympic competition? The rituals that athletes count on to win a tip off or sink a game-winning shot — like the college basketball shorts Michael Jordan used to wear under his NBA uniform — might be more than just mere superstitions. Gregg Steinberg, Austin Peay State University, studies human performance in sports.
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APS Members Honored at ICP
Five APS members will be honored for their contributions to psychological science on July 26, 2012, at the 30th International Congress of Psychology (ICP) in Cape Town, South Africa — the first flagship meeting of the International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS ) to be held in Africa. Sathasivan "Saths" Cooper will accept the IUPsyS Achievement Against the Odds Award for his significant contributions to psychological science in the host country, South Africa, where he was jailed for nine years for his opposition to apartheid. Cooper is one leader credited with restoring the integrity of South African psychology, which was damaged by its ties to apartheid.
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How Shocking Will Others Find Lady Gaga?
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the 24th APS Annual Convention in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Troy Campbell from Duke University presents his research “How Shocking Will Others Find Lady Gaga? Desensitization Via Repetition Biases Predictions.” The more experience you have, the wiser you are, right? Troy Campbell and colleagues at Duke University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Chicago found the opposite was true. Repeated exposure to jokes, pictures of Lady Gaga, sports photography, art, and a painful noise can actually make people worse at predicting how other people would experience the content.
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Board Member Lisa Feldman Barrett Receives Highest Canadian Scholarly Award
APS Board Member Lisa Feldman Barrett was recently elected to the Royal Society of Canada (RSC): The Academies of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences of Canada. Barrett, who is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, received her PhD from the University of Waterloo. Her laboratory, the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory, investigates the nature of emotion and the brain’s creation of the mind. Experiential, behavioral, psychophysiology, and brain-imaging methods are all used in her research. The Society consists of elected Canadian citizens or residents who have made outstanding contributions to the arts, humanities, sciences, and Canadian public life.
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The Rocky Road to a Sense of Self
Adolescents spend a lot of time figuring out who they are, and for good reason. A coherent concept of self — based on commitments, standards, and life roles — is associated with positive mental health outcomes. Now, a group of researchers in the Netherlands has fleshed out some of the details about relationships among identity, self, and mental health in young adolescents. The results appeared in the European Journal of Personality. Seth J. Schwartz and his coauthors collected data from 580 Dutch sixth graders.
