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Narrative Identity 101
Public Radio International: So if our identities are just stories... what does that mean for our lives, our memories, our mental health? Jonathan Adler is a psychologist who studies narrative identity. He tells Jim Fleming that his research found that our sense of well-being is based on the tone of our internal narratives rather than the stories themselves. Listen to the story: Public Radio International
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Wird man beim Bund zum Mann?
bild der wissenschaft: Das Militär prägt die Persönlichkeit – und umgekehrt "Die Bundeswehr lässt junge Kerle zu echten Männern reifen" – dieser Ausspruch hat offenbar einen wahren Kern, zumindest wenn man "Männlichkeit" auf der Basis traditioneller Rollenerwartungen definiert. Denn laut einer Studie unter Beteiligung von Wissenschaftlern der Universität Tübingen beeinflusst der Wehrdienst in substanzieller Weise, wie verträglich sie im Umgang mit anderen Personen sind. Charakterliche Veränderungen nachzuvollziehen, ist äußerst kompliziert.
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Sleep, Social Cues, and Dissociative Disorders
There’s a good chance that most of your knowledge about dissociative identity disorder (DID) — formerly known as multiple personality disorder — comes from films like Sybil (1976) or The Three Faces of Eve (1957). Sybil and Eve both develop multiple, distinct personalities in order to cope with psychologically traumatic events from their childhoods. But current research has shown that this popular “posttraumatic model” is not accurate. DID may actually arise due to a combination of factors, such as cues from therapists, a fantasy-prone personality, and even irregular sleep patterns.
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Facebook Users: Ruminating or Savoring?
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Sara M. Locatelli of the Department of Veterans Affairs and Loyola University, Chicago present her poster session research on “Facebook Use, Rumination, Savoring, and Personality: Influence on Health and Life Satisfaction.” Locatelli and her coauthors examined Facebook use among college students — specifically status updates — to look for links among Facebook use, rumination, savoring, and specific health outcomes. They found a connection between Facebook use and rumination but no link between Facebook use and savoring.
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Broken Hearts Really Hurt
“Broken-hearted” isn’t just a metaphor—social pain and physical pain have a lot in common, according to Naomi Eisenberger of the University of Califiornia-Los Angeles, the author of a new paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. In the paper, she surveys recent research on the overlap between physical and social pain. “Rejection is such a powerful experience for people,” Eisenberger says.
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Peter Ayton: To Risk or Not to Risk
Peter Ayton, a researcher from City University London, UK, investigates how people make judgments and decisions under conditions of risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity. Ayton will be speaking at the Invited Symposium Emotional Influences on Decision Making at the 24th APS Annual Convention in Chicago. Ayton’s talk in this symposium, Dread Risk: Terrorism and Bicycle Accidents, will discuss a claim made by Gigerenzer (2004) that dread evoked by the September 11, 2001 attacks prompted switching from flying to driving, producing additional road accidents causing 1,500 fatalities.
