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Praise Is Fleeting, but Brickbats We Recall
The New York Times: MY sisters and I have often marveled that the stories we tell over and over about our childhood tend to focus on what went wrong. We talk about the time my older sister got her finger crushed by a train door on a trip in Scandinavia. We recount the time we almost missed the plane to Israel because my younger sister lost her stuffed animal in the airport terminal. Since, fortunately, we’ve had many more pleasant experiences than unhappy ones, I assumed that we were unusual in zeroing in on our negative experiences. But it turns out we’re typical. “This is a general tendency for everyone,” said Clifford Nass, a professor of communication at Stanford University.
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Facebook May Not Be So Friendly For Those With Low Self-Esteem
NPR: Posting on Facebook is an easy way to connect with people, but it also can be a means to alienate them. That can be particularly troublesome for those with low self-esteem. People with poor self-image tend to view the glass as half empty. They complain a bit more than everyone else, and they often share their negative views and feelings when face to face with friends and acquaintances. Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, wondered whether those behavior patterns would hold true online. They published their findings in the journal Psychological Science.
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Lo que una persona piense de su enfermedad influye en cuánto se puede curar, o no
Yahoo! Noticias: Lo que una persona piensa de su enfermedad afecta la evolución de la patología, al punto que puede determinar la curación y como queda su estado de salud. Polémica, si se tiene en cuenta que no todas las enfermedades tienen un origen psicosomático, es la conclusión a la que llegaron los psicólogos Keith Petrie de la Universidad de Auckland (Australia) y John Weinman del King's College de Londres (Reino Unido). Es que ellos aseguran haber hallado en sus investigaciones que la percepción que tienen las personas de su propia enfermedad afecta muchas decisiones, como por ejemplo si van a seguir el tratamiento asignado por su médico.
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Politics, Odors and Soap
The New York Times: Conservatives may not like liberals, but they seem to understand them. In contrast, many liberals find conservative voters not just wrong but also bewildering. One academic study asked 2,000 Americans to fill out questionnaires about moral questions. In some cases, they were asked to fill them out as they thought a “typical liberal” or a “typical conservative” would respond. Moderates and conservatives were adept at guessing how liberals would answer questions. Liberals, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal,” were least able to put themselves in the minds of their adversaries and guess how conservatives would answer.
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Daydream Believers: Scientists Ask Why Our Minds Wander
ABC: Zoning out while trying to read this? No offense taken, since all of us do it at least a third of the time that we're awake. In recent years a number of academicians have ventured into this previously unexplored territory, trying to figure out why our minds wander while we're supposed to be paying attention. They were probably spurred on by the blank faces of their students during their stimulating lectures. But despite considerable interest in determining precisely why we zone out so often, scientists say it is still a bit unclear why we do it. There's some good news, however.
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Q & A With Psychological Scientist Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz is the Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College. His research investigates the decision-making processes that underlie our choices and examines how our choices make us feel. We invited our Facebook and Twitter followers to ask Schwartz questions about his research - here is what he had to say: Do you have any suggestions for a better college application process that would not only be helpful in stopping the extreme competitiveness in our society but also better match students to the college that best suites them? Yes I do.
