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Psychologists’ Golf Trick Shows Superstition Boosts Performance
WIRED: How can you make people better at sports? Tell them they’re using equipment that previously belonged to a professional athlete. No, really. A new study finds that golfers significantly improved their putting ability when they believed the putter they were using belonged to a celebrity golfer.
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Study of the Day: The Mindset You Need to Succeed After Failing
The Atlantic: PROBLEM: Previous studies have shown that people who believe that intelligence can improve with time and effort are more likely to bounce back from failure than those who view their abilities as fixed. Why? METHODOLOGY: Michigan State University psychology professor Jason Moser recruited 25 people to take part in a test that was easy to flub. They asked subjects to wear a cap that recorded electrical brain activity while they identified the letter at the center of a five-letter series, where the middle letter was sometimes the same as the other four ("MMMMM" or "NNMNN"). The researchers quizzed the subjects about their attitudes toward learning after the experiment.
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The risks of politeness: It has its place only to a point
The Windsor Star: Dr. Aidan Feeney has a few thoughts about politeness. Essentially, he thinks it has the ability to cost lives. "The more serious the situation, the more likely you are to be polite and the more room there is for confusion," says Feeney, a professor at the school of psychology at Queen's University, Belfast, and co-author of a new paper entitled The Risk of Polite Misunderstanding, published last week by the Association of Psychological Science.
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Turn That Frown Upside Down
How can you make your day better? Turn that frown upside down. As corny as that phrase is, science can back it up. As part of the Wall Street Journal's "Is It True" video series, Christina Tsuei interviewed APS member George Bonanno about whether smiles really do improve your mood. Bonanno, author of “The Other Side of Sadness,” talked about the benefits of a spontaneous joy-filled smile. The video below also references a 2010 study published in Psychological Science, Cosmetic Use of Botulinum Toxin-A Affects Processing of Emotional Language.
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Genetic Research Helps Scientists Understand Alcohol Use
A rat, a mouse, and a vole walked into a bar… It isn’t just a bad joke: According to John Crabbe, who delivered the 16th Annual Mark Keller Honorary Lecture at the National Institute of Health on October 25, rodents can teach us a lot about the way humans behave when they consume alcohol. Crabbe, who serves as Director of the Portland Alcohol Research Center, was honored for pinpointing genes and neurobiological factors that shape the way mammals respond to alcohol. Breeding mice that are resistant or susceptible to the negative results of alcohol use allowed Crabbe to study interactions among genes, environmental factors, and alcohol-related behaviors.
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Sexism and Gender Inequality
Data from 57 countries indicates that an individual’s sexism leads to gender inequality in the society as a whole.
