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The Psychological Science of “Inception”
For three weeks in a row, Leonardo DiCaprio’s movie “Inception” reigned at the top of the Box Office hit list. Sure, the special effects and imaginative landscapes are exciting, but did you know that the seemingly outlandish concept behind the storyline of “Inception” is really related to ideas that psychological scientists have been studying for years? According to the Association for Psychological Science, empirical research has shown that ideas can, in fact, be implanted into people’s minds and integrated into a person’s memory.
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People Who Are Angry Pay More Attention to Rewards Than Threats
Anger is a negative emotion. But, like being happy or excited, feeling angry makes people want to seek rewards, according to a new study of emotion and visual attention. The researchers found that people who are angry pay more attention to rewards than to threats—the opposite of people feeling other negative emotions like fear. Previous research has shown that emotion affects what someone pays attention to. If a fearful or anxious person is given a choice of a rewarding picture, like a sexy couple, or a threatening picture, like a person waving a knife threateningly, they'll spend more time looking at the threat than at the rewarding picture.
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Cross-Cultural Perspective Can Help Teamwork in the Workplace
In this era of globalization, many companies are expanding into numerous countries and cultures. But they should not take a "one size fits all" approach to their business and management styles. As the authors of a new article in a special section on Culture and Psychology in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, point out, people in different cultures think about work in different ways. Being aware of the cultural environment that their coworkers come from may help people work together better. For example, people have different expectations about teamwork, says Cristina B.
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People Think Immoral Behavior Is Funny–But Only if It Also Seems Benign
What makes something funny? Philosophers have been tossing that question around since Plato. Now two psychological scientists think they've come up with the formula: humor comes from a violation or threat to the way the world ought to be that is, at the same time, benign. Most older theories of humor all come up short in one way or another, says A. Peter McGraw, of the University of Colorado-Boulder, who coauthored the study with Caleb Warren. Freud thought humor came from a release of tension; another theory holds that humor comes from a sense of superiority, and still another from incongruity.
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Babies may show signs of autism
USA Today: Signs of autism may show up in babies as young as 1 month old, a new study shows. But the tip-offs are not the usual red flags, such as a lack of eye contact or smiling, the researchers noted. Instead, they found babies who needed neonatal intensive care and were later diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder were more likely to have abnormal muscle tone and differences in their visual processing than babies who went on to develop normally after time in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Read the whole story: USA Today
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How to quit smoking? Think about smoking
I quit smoking many years ago, but even today I can recall the unpleasantness of that time—the cravings, the obsessive thoughts. My strategy was to keep my mind and body busy all the time, in order to keep my thoughts of cigarettes at bay. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. I relapsed a few times before I finally quit for good. There were quitters’ support groups available at the time, but the idea didn’t make sense to me. Why would I want to sit around with other dreary addicts and talk incessantly about the very thing I was trying to banish from my mind? Wouldn’t that just undermine my willpower and leave me more miserable? Well, no, as it turns out.
