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Do You Have the Luck Factor?
Why do some people lead happy successful lives while other face repeated failure and sadness? Why do some find their perfect partner whilst others stagger from one broken relationship to the next? What enables some people to have successful careers whilst others find themselves trapped in jobs they detest? Is luck only for the Irish or is there anything “unlucky people” can do anything to improve their luck and their lives? Ten years ago, Professor Richard Wiseman decided to search for the elusive luck factor by investigating the actual beliefs and experiences of lucky and unlucky people.
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How a Helping Hand Can Slow You
It’s great to know your partner will help you pursue your goals, right? Maybe not. According to a new study published in Psychological Science, having a helpful partner can actually undermine your motivation to work towards those goals. This “self-regulatory outsourcing” phenomenon involves unconsciously relying on someone else to move your goals forward and, as a result, reducing your own efforts to reach those goals. In the authors’ first experiment, volunteers who focused on a way their partners helped them reach health and fitness goals planned to devote less effort to these goals than a control group.
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2011 Summer Institute on Research Methodology, Oregon State University
July 12-13, 2011: Stata & Multilevel/Longitudinal Models Using Stata July 14-15, 2011: Mplus & Longitudinal Modeling Using Mplus The Oregon State University Summer Institute on Research Methodology is sponsored by the College of Health and Human Sciences Methodology Core and the Center for Healthy Aging Research. About the Summer Institute Introductory and advanced coursework using Mplus and Stata will be offered during the Institute. Participants in the Stata session are expected to be comfortable with multiple regression and participants in the Mplus session should also have some familiarity with factor analysis. No knowledge of Mplus or Stata is assumed.
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Vote – ‘Just Do It!’
Who would have thought that exercising and voting were related to each other? A recent study published in Psychological Science found a link between people’s physical activity and their political activity. Researchers ranked each state for physical activity based on various population databases on exercise, diabetes, obesity, etc and found that people who live in more active states are also more likely to vote.
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Which to Use? ‘Was Doing’ or ‘Did’
Verb tense is more important than you may think, especially in how you form or perceive intention in a narrative. In recent research studied in Psychological Science, William Hart of the University of Alabama states that “when you describe somebody’s actions in terms of what they’re ‘doing,’ that action is way more vivid in [a reader's] mind.” Subsequently, when action is imagined vividly, greater intention is associated with it. Hart and Dolores Albarracín of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign sought to apply these findings to a situation where this mental bias could have a grave impact – a court case.
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Now Accepting Nominations for the 2011 Oswald-Külpe-Prize for the Experimental Study of Higher Mental Processes
Honoring the great tradition of the Würzburg School of Psychology and its founder Oswald Külpe, the University of Würzburg invites nominations for its Oswald-Külpe-Prize, which is conferred biennially in a special ceremony. The purpose of the award is to recognize exceptional scientific contributions to the experimental study of higher mental processes. It will be presented in Würzburg on November 18, 2011. The Külpe-Award includes a cash prize of € 4.000,- and the recipient’s expenses for travelling and accommodation. Previous recipients were Profs. Asher Koriat, University of Haifa (Israel), Richard E.
