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Social Connections Drive the ‘Upward Spiral’ of Positive Emotions and Health
People who experience warmer, more upbeat emotions may have better physical health because they make more social connections, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research, led by Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Bethany Kok of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences also found it is possible for a person to self-generate positive emotions in ways that make him or her physically healthier. “People tend to liken their emotions to the weather, viewing them as uncontrollable,” says Fredrickson.
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Perspectives Celebrates 25 Years of APS
APS is turning 25 -- to celebrate, upcoming issues of Perspectives on Psychological Science will feature special sections that look back at the last 25 years of our field. As Perspectives editor Barbara A. Spellman observes in her introduction to the first special section in the May issue, the field of psychological science has seen some huge changes since 1988: "There are now research and statistical tools that did not exist then; theoretical perspectives that have arisen or disappeared; and entire fields of inquiry that have been born, merged, split, renamed, and disbanded." According to Spellman, the special sections will include two types of articles.
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Bouncing Back May Be Tough, but So Are We
The Chronicle of Higher Education: In 2005 the National Science Foundation brought together some unlikely collaborators—ecologists and psychologists among them—to talk about resilience. It turns out they had a lot in common. For decades researchers in each field had been studying the ways in which external events and stresses could transform complex systems. Their conclusions were strikingly similar: Resilience is often the result of a period of stress and change. Just as ecosystems can absorb serious shock and transform into different, but stable versions of themselves, so can people. Resilience, it seems, is hard-wired into us. Read the whole story: The Chronicle of Higher Education
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2013 Swag in DC
Attendees will be snagging APS swag in the Exhibit Hall at this year’s Convention. Visit the APS Booth for free pens, pocket buddy notebooks, hand sanitizers, experiMINTs to freshen your breath, “Risky Business” sunglasses, a variety of APS buttons, and 2014 Convention magnets for the 26th APS Annual Convention in San Francisco, California. Don’t miss APS’s “shock box” t-shirts based on Stanley Milgram’s groundbreaking experiments on obedience to authority. The t-shirts commemorate the Milgram shock box’s trip to DC.
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Study: Babies Like Watching Puppets Who Are Different From Them Get Hurt
The Atlantic: People are not always good to each other. We do know that babies prefer faces similar to their own and are better at processing emotional cues and distinguishing between people of their own ethnicity. I'm not saying you're racist, babies, but it does seem like you could be cooler. Researchers at University of British Columbia, Temple University, University of Chicago, and Yale University led by Kiley Hamlin worked with 64 nine-month-olds and 64 fourteen-month-olds. They first established whether each baby preferred graham crackers or green beans.
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Memory, Aging, and Distraction
The Huffington Post: The population in the United States is aging. That has created a lot of anxiety about the cognitive effects of getting older. Lots of research suggests that older adults are worse than younger adults on a variety of different thinking tasks. They remember fewer words from lists they see. They are slower to respond in many situations. They have more trouble ignoring distracting information.
