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Vitamin risks? Study ties supplements to bad health decisions
CBS News: Talk about irony. People who take vitamin supplements may be more likely to take risks with their health, according to a surprising new study from Taiwan. Its authors conclude that taking vitamins may give an "illusory sense of invulnerability" that leads the pill-poppers to exercise less and to eat more than they should. Researchers looked into the psychology of vitamin supplementation after noticing an "asymmetrical" relationship between public health and the use of vitamins.
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A Study Looks At the Nature of Change in Our Aging, Changing Brains
As we get older, our cognitive abilities change, improving when we’re younger and declining as we age. Scientists posit a hierarchical structure within which these abilities are organized. There’s the “lowest” level— measured by specific tests, such as story memory or word memory; the second level, which groups various skills involved in a category of cognitive ability, such as memory, perceptual speed, or reasoning; and finally, the “general,” or G, factor, a sort of statistical aggregate of all the thinking abilities. What happens to this structure as we age? That was the question Timothy A.
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Beautiful Brains
National Geographic: Although you know your teenager takes some chances, it can be a shock to hear about them. One fine May morning not long ago my oldest son, 17 at the time, phoned to tell me that he had just spent a couple hours at the state police barracks. Apparently he had been driving "a little fast." What, I asked, was "a little fast"? Turns out this product of my genes and loving care, the boy-man I had swaddled, coddled, cooed at, and then pushed and pulled to the brink of manhood, had been flying down the highway at 113 miles an hour. "That's more than a little fast," I said. He agreed. In fact, he sounded somber and contrite.
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Lying Is More Common When We’re Emailing, Study Shows
Huffington Post: Conversing online might make you more inclined to lie, a new study suggests. Researchers from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst found that people lied more when they were emailing or instant-messaging, compared with when they talked to someone in person. Their study was published in the journal Journal of Applied Social Psychology. "It's not news that we lie. What's new is that we lie even more online," study researcher Mattitiyahu Zimbler, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, told HealthDay.
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Oliver Sacks: What hallucination reveals about our minds
Mainstream society tends to associate hallucinations and delusions with the drug-addled and the mentally ill, but in reality they stem from many different sources and provide some amazing insight into how the brain works. Charles Bonnet syndrome, for example, involves the visually impaired "seeing" some incredibly vivid images that aren't there. Neurological anthropologist Oliver Sacks has studied this phenomenon and discusses his interesting findings regarding perception, cognition and brain activity. Watch the TED Talk here
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Understanding the Psychological Science Behind Negotiations
This week, the deficit reduction supercommittee failed to reach a consensus in creating a plan to reduce the national deficit by at least $1.2 trillion. Psychological science can provide some insights into the difficulties faced by the supercommittee members as they proceeded with the negotiations under intense political pressure and public scrutiny. “Interestingly, from negotiation research we know that it is much easier to negotiate deals that involve gains, instead of losses,” says Carsten de Dreu, Professor of Psychology at the University of Amsterdam.
