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The ‘flagellation effect’: Can pain compensate for immorality?
Many religious traditions have pain rituals, and some of them are grotesque. Some Shia Muslims whip themselves with zangirs, whips made of knife blades, until their backs are red with blood. In the Hindu ritual of kavadi, believers use meat hooks and skewers to pierce their legs, face and tongue. In Christianity, “mortification of the flesh” dates back to the original teachings, and practices range from wearing hair shirts and chains to various forms of self-flagellation, even self-castration. Pain purifies. It atones for sin and cleanses the soul. Or at least that’s the idea. But is there any psychological truth to this notion?
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The Language of Young Love: The Ways Couples Talk Can Predict Relationship Success
We know that people tend to be attracted to, date, and marry other people who resemble themselves in terms of personality, values, and physical appearance. However, these features only skim the surface of what makes a relationship work. The ways that people talk are also important. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people who speak in similar styles are more compatible. The study focused on words called "function words." These aren't nouns and verbs; they're the words that show how those words relate.
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People Aren’t Born Afraid of Spiders and Snakes: Fear Is Quickly Learned During Infancy
Studying how infants and toddlers react to scary objects can help reveal the developmental origins of common fears and phobias.
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With Age Comes Happiness: Study Suggests Older Adults Have Better Emotional Control
As people age, things fall apart. You can't read without glasses—or even with them. Bones weaken. You can't find your keys. And yet, people tend to become happier as they age. A new paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that this could be because older people are better at regulating their emotions. "Older age gives us this really interesting so-called paradox: physically, you're falling apart, and yet people are doing well," says Heather L. Urry of Tufts University, who cowrote the paper with James J. Gross of Stanford University.
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New Research From Psychological Science
The Insula and Evaluative Processes Gary G. Berntson, Greg J. Norman, Antoine Bechara, Joel Bruss, Daniel Tranel, and John T. Cacioppo The insula has been implicated in evaluative and affective processes. New findings indicate that the insula may be broadly involved in integrating affective and cognitive processes. Participants rated the positivity and negativity of picture stimuli and how emotionally arousing they found the pictures to be. Volunteers with lesions of the insula exhibited progressively reduced arousal ratings for progressively more pleasant or unpleasant pictures than did volunteers with lesions of other brain regions.
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Are Positive Emotions Good for Your Health in Old Age?
The notion that feeling good may be good for your health is not new, but is it really true? A new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reviews the existing research on how positive emotions can influence health outcomes in later adulthood. “We all age. It is how we age, however, that determines the quality of our lives,” said Anthony Ong of Cornell University, author of the review article. The data he reviews suggest that positive emotions may be a powerful antidote to stress, pain, and illness. There are several pathways through which a positive attitude can protect against poor health later in life.
