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The Bizarre Phobia You’ve Never Heard Of: Fear of Holes
LiveScience: A strange phobia makes people feel panicked or ill at the sight of holes, and new research hints at the cause. In people who suffer from trypophobia, the sight of soap bubbles, aerated chocolate, or other objects with clusters of holes can cause migraines, panic attacks, hot sweats and a racing heart. The fear may stem from a visual resemblance to poisonous animals, according to a new study. Trypophobia is "the most common phobia you have never heard of," said study researcher Geoff Cole, a psychologist at the University of Essex, in England, who suffers from the fear himself. Read the whole story: LiveScience
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The Opt-Out Option
Getting employees to sign up for the company health plan, the 401(k), and other benefits can often be as daunting as getting a cat to fetch a stick. Researchers have learned that options and services too often falter because they’re designed to depend on people taking some kind of action. Studies show that relying on inaction yields better results. Some experiments with organ donation serve as a model. In the United States, 85 percent of Americans say they approve of organ donation, but only 28 percent give their consent to be donors by signing a donor card. The difference means that far more Americans die awaiting transplants. But psychologists Eric J.
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Spouses learn to ignore each other’s voices over time, study says
National Post: Middle-aged couples are able to tune out each other’s voices selectively so that they can pay more attention to other people, a study suggests. Husbands and wives become so familiar with one another’s pitch and sound that they become more simple to separate from background noise.
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How to Tell If You Are a Bad Employee
The Wall Street Journal: "She's a bully" and "obnoxious" are what San Francisco-based career coach Joel Garfinkle heard from employees at a Silicon Valley tech company about a colleague. The company had approached Mr. Garfinkle because its managers needed coaching help. Their best salesperson wasn't getting along with her co-workers and managers, who frequently complained about her insensitive behavior. ... The problem is that humans in general are bad at judging themselves so they may wait too long to act, says David Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell University who researches how people perceive their own skills and competence.
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The Inside Story On The Fear Of Holes
NPR: Trypophobia may be moving out of the urban dictionary and into the scientific literature. A recent study in the peer-review journal Psychological Science takes a first crack at explaining why some people may suffer from a fear of holes. Trypophobia may be hard to find in textbooks and diagnostic manuals, but a brief Web search will show that plenty of people appear to have it. There's even a website, trypophobia.com, that explains the problem like this: "Have you ever felt anxious when you see a hole in the road or a pot? Or are you nervous when someone will bring a cheese with lots of holes in front of you? If yes, you might have trypophobia." But why?
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In This Online Psychology Class, the Key Words Are Real Time
The New York Times: Before they took their seats in front of the camera under the warm lights of a new studio, Sam Gosling reminded his co-host, James Pennebaker, the chairman of the psychology department at the University of Texas at Austin, to run down the hall and apply his makeup. ... Introduction to Psychology was about to go live online as a synchronous massive online course. “The territory is so new here,” Mr. Gosling, a tenured professor, said the next morning.
