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13th Annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology Meeting
The 13th annual SPSP Meeting will be held January 26-28, 2012, in San Diego, California. For more information visit: http://www.spsp.org/confer.htm
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Neuroscience 2011
The Society for Neuroscience will hold its annual convention, Neuroscience 2011, November 12-16 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. For more information visit: http://www.sfn.org/am2011/
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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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Protective Behavioral Strategies as a Mediator and Moderator in Alcohol-Related Outcomes
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Gabrielle D'Lima from Old Dominion University present her research on “Protective Behavioral Strategies as a Mediator and Moderator in Alcohol-Related Outcomes.” With coauthors Matthew R. Pearson (Old Dominion University) andMichelle L. Kelley (Old Dominion University), Gabrielle D'Lima investigated the role of protective behavioral strategies as a possible mediator and moderator of the relationship between self-regulation and alcohol-related outcomes in first-year undergraduates. Self-regulation, in general, has been found to predict alcohol consequences.
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Why Does That Conductor Look So Creepy?
Several movies have tried and failed to generate lifelike animations of humans. For example, the lifeless faces in Polar Express made people uncomfortable because they tried to emulate life but didn’t get it quite right. “There’s something fundamentally important about seeing a face and knowing that the lights are on and someone is home,” says Thalia Wheatley of Dartmouth College. Humans can see faces in anything—the moon, a piece of toast, two dots and a line for a nose—but we are much more discriminating when it comes to deciding what’s alive and what’s not.
