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Buffering the Impact of Maternal Depression, Anxiety, and Stress on Neonatal Outcomes
Sophia E. Green, Emory University, presented her research on "Buffering the Impact of Maternal Depression, Anxiety, and Stress on Neonatal Outcomes" at the 2014 APS Annual Convention in San Francisco. Green received a 2014 APSSC RISE Research Award for this work.
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Trust the Face or the Body?
Our study investigates the role of in-group out-group distinction in the relationship between face versus body cues and emotion recognition. The basic emotion model by APS William James Fellow Paul Ekman suggested that people recognize emotions based on faces. A recent study led by Hillel Aviezer of The Hebrew University of Jeruselem, however, suggested that people also identify emotional expressions based on contextual body cues. Our study goes one step further and investigates whether there is any variation in judging emotions from faces and bodies for in-group or out-group members.
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Social Processes in Daily Life
Michael Roche and his coauthors studied social processes and how they play out in daily life. In their study, college students with a high-dependency or a low-dependency personality reported how agentic (dominant vs. submissive) and communally (friendly vs. unfriendly) they behaved towards others, and how agentic and communally others behaved towards them during a one week period. High-dependency and low-dependency participants were similarly agentic towards interaction partners that were highly communal, but high-dependency participants were much less agentic than low-dependency participants to interaction partners that were less communal.
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Are We Happier When We Have More Options?
NPR: Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied. Listen to the story: NPR
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Study: Gun Violence on the Rise in PG-13 Films
The Wall Street Journal: A new study concludes that gun violence in PG-13 movies has more than tripled since 1985, and now exceeds the level found in R-rated films. Study co-author and Ohio State Professor of Psychology Brad Bushman discusses his findings. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
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Optical Illusion Can Improve Your Golf Game
Inside Science: In studies at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., cognitive psychologist Jessica Witt found that simply making a hole appear larger on the green can improve a golfer's putting accuracy by as much as ten percent. “When the hole looked bigger participants were also more successful at putting. So, making the golf hole look bigger, even though it hadn’t changed size, it just looked bigger, led to more golf putting success,” said Witt, now at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Read the whole story: Inside Science
