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Welcome to the Zero Sum Era. Now How Do We Get Out?
Zero-sum thinking has spread like a mind virus, from geopolitics to pop culture. ... “One thing I’ve seen people do if they know they’re being forced into a zero-sum game is minimize investment and hold back resources,” said Michael Smithson, an emeritus professor of psychology at the Australian National University who has studied zero-sum thinking for more than a decade.
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The Problem With Optimism in a Crisis
... Even better is a technique called mental contrasting, co-developed by the psychologist Gabriele Oettingen, who led the study on college students. The idea is to visualize an attainable goal (such as getting involved in local politics or running a mile), then think about all the obstacles that might get in your way (such as failing to find people who share your political vision, or shin splints). Mental contrasting has been shown to help people improve their relationships and recover from chronic pain, possibly because it undercuts the complacency brought about by unrealistic optimism.
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The Expert Guide to Taking Control of Your Emotions
Ethan Kross is a world expert in the psychology of emotions, and he has identified a set of tools that can help us to tend our wellbeing. Ever since he was a child, Ethan Kross has been "an observer of emotion" and the often counter-productive ways that we deal with difficult feelings. "It seemed as if we were all just stumbling along, occasionally finding an accidental or Band-Aid solution to help us manage our emotional lives. Sometimes our improvised tools helped. Sometimes they made things worse. It seemed so haphazard, isolating, and inefficient," he says.
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Searching for Structure and Purpose in Disordered Behavior
New articles in Perspectives on Psychological Science explore the nature of “noise” in human behavior.
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Untangling Mental Health Disparities in Bisexual Young Adults
Researchers break apart monoliths to find out why bisexual people are more burdened by mental health challenges than gay or lesbian people.
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Why It’s Important to Talk about Race with Children
When my son was three years old, he told me one day after preschool that he didn’t want to play with me because I was Black. He went on; Black people are mean, he said, and he only wanted to play with his dad because my husband was white, like him. We were shocked and I was hurt—my child thought I was bad because I was Black. And even though my son is biracial, he characterized himself as white. What my son said that day unfortunately reinforced what research has long shown: children absorb racial biases from their environment. I study racial socialization—the ways children learn about race and racism—and I know how early these biases form.
