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How Sick Do You Think You Are? It Could Affect Your Health Outcome
Huffington Post: How sick you think you are may play a big role in your health outcome, according to a new review of research. Researchers from the University of Auckland and the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College found that the way people perceive their own illness is directly related to them seeking out health care and following doctors' orders, and even their overall survival. The study will be published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. Read the full story: Huffington Post
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Social Pain Hurts Too
Most doctors don’t recommend Tylenol for a broken heart or a supportive friend for a headache. But an article published by Janet Taylor Spence Award recipient Naomi I. Eisenberger in the February 2012 edition of Current Directions in Psychological Science shows there is a growing body of evidence that social pain shares some of the neural circuitry that underlies physical pain. Eisenberg explains that physical pain has two components — sensory and affective — each of which is associated with different parts of the brain.
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Why Morning Routines Are Creativity Killers
TIME: Brrriiinnng. The alarm clock buzzes in another hectic weekday morning. You leap out of bed, rush into the shower, into your clothes and out the door with barely a moment to think. A stressful commute gets your blood pressure climbing. Once at the office, you glance through the newspaper, its array of stories ranging from discouraging to depressing to tragic. With a sigh, you pour yourself a cup of coffee and get down to work, ready to do some creative, original problem-solving. Good luck with that.
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The Complex Relationship between Memory and Silence
People who suffer a traumatic experience often don’t talk about it, and many forget it over time. But not talking about something doesn’t always mean you’ll forget it; if you try to force yourself not to think about white bears, soon you’ll be imagining polar bears doing the polka. A group of psychological scientists explore the relationship between silence and memories in a new paper published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “There’s this idea, with silence, that if we don’t talk about something, it starts fading,” says Charles B. Stone of Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, an author of the paper.
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Jonathan Haidt Decodes the Tribal Psychology of Politics
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Jonathan Haidt is occupying Wall Street. Sort of. It's a damp and bone-chilling January night in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park. The 48-year-old psychologist, tall and youthful-looking despite his silvered hair, is lecturing the occupiers about how conservatives would view their ideas. "Conservatives believe in equality before the law," he tells the young activists, who are here in the "canyons of wealth" to talk people power over vegan stew. "They just don't care about equality of outcome." Explaining conservatism at a left-wing occupation?
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Romantic Jealousy and Self-Esteem
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the 23rd APS Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Jessica L. Bowler from Pitzer College present her poster session research on “Self-Esteem and Components of Romantic Jealousy.” Bowler distributed a survey that described four scenarios designed to induce romantic jealousy. Then she analyzed participants’ responses in relation to self-esteem. She found that participants with high self-esteem were less likely to be jealous after reading the scenarios. Participants with low self-esteem were likely to become more insecure, more anxious, more distressed, and less trusting in response to hypothetical infidelity situations.
