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Arturo Hernandez Shares Vision as New Editor of Perspectives on Psychological Science
Hernandez share his ideas on moving beyond written formats, the value of retrospective approaches, and the importance of respect.
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Hypochondria Is a Real and Dangerous Illness, New Research Shows
... Whatever the cause, hypochondria is associated with a certain level of innumeracy, or trouble grasping risk levels—difficulty perhaps compounded by anxieties about those risks. Tobias Kube, a psychologist currently at the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau in Germany, found this out when he was working with Barsky at Harvard Medical School. In a study, they compared 60 people with hypochondria and related disorders to 37 volunteers without the conditions. The researchers asked the participants how worried they’d be if they were told they had a certain chance of having or not having a particular medical condition.
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How to Maximize the Surprising Upsides to Aging
It turns out there’s science behind the old saw “the older you get, the wiser you are.” Laura Carstensen, founding director of Stanford University’s Center on Longevity, says research has made surprising discoveries about the way older people view their lives. With fewer “what-ifs,” they appear to gain more clarity on their place in the world.
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Hitting the Curiosity Sweet Spot Speeds Up Learning
The world is full of things to learn. Where to start? How to choose what to pay attention to? What motivates someone to seek new knowledge? We’re often curious in a particular way: we want to learn more about things we already know a little bit about. “You can think of curiosity as the process that guides the acquisition of knowledge,” says neuroscientist Celeste Kidd of the University of California, Berkeley. We internally track how well we are learning, or our learning progress, and learning comes more easily and is more enjoyable when curiosity is high. Following our instincts appears to be a particularly rewarding way to explore the world.
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How Thanksgiving Dinner Can Make You A Better Collaborator
... The connection between food and cooperation was explored in a 2019 research article by Kaitlin Woolley and Ayelet Fishbach that was published by The Journal Psychological Science. The authors found that the way a meal is served matters. Shared plates provide stronger cooperation, while eating individual, separate meals brings about less coordination between people around the table.
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Forcing a Smile Using Electrical Stimulation Can Boost Your Mood
The expression “a smile a day keeps the blues away” may have some credence beyond the realm of greeting card messages. The lingering question of whether a smile or frown lifts or depresses emotion has persisted for decades and is still actively debated. ... The idea that the body plays a role in shaping how people feel and perceive the world is “old and fascinating,” says Sebastian Korb, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Essex in England and senior author of the research, which was published in Emotion.
