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What Makes You Happy? It May Depend on Your Age
LiveScience: People's happiness levels change with age, an idea reflected in personal experiences and public opinion polls, but a new study shows that much of that change may boil down to how people define happiness itself. Whereas happiness in younger people is often related to excitement, for older people, contentment was associated with a happy existence, the researchers found. The study indicates there are at least two different kinds of happiness, "one associated with peacefulness and one associated with being excited," study researcher Cassie Mogilner, a professor of marketing at Wharton, told LiveScience. Read more: LiveScience
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Are Pet Owners Healthier and Happier? Maybe Not…
The general claim that living with a pet makes for a happier, healthier or longer life has weak scientific backing, a psychological researcher reports.
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Recognizing voices harder for people with dyslexia
USA Today: Pick up the phone and hear, "Hey, what's up?" Chances are, those few words are enough to recognize who's speaking — perhaps unless you have dyslexia. In a surprise discovery, researchers found adults with that reading disorder also have a hard time recognizing voices. The work isn't just a curiosity. It fits with research to uncover the building blocks of literacy and how they can go wrong. The eventual goal: To spot at-risk youngsters even before they open "Go, Dog, Go!" in kindergarten — instead of diagnosing dyslexia in a struggling second-grader. Read more: USA Today
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Prise de risques : Stop aux préjugés hommes/femmes !
France Soir: Cap ou pas cap ? La prise de risque est un phénomène qui intéresse les chercheurs. Selon une étude publiée dans l'édition mensuelle du journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, certaines idées reçues seraient à mettre définitivement au placard. Les femmes des mauviettes ? Les ados des têtes-brûlées ? Tout n'est pas si simple... Selon les auteurs, les expériences scientifiques qui étudient l'exposition au danger jaugent le risque à la manière d'un jeu télévisé. Partir avec la cagnotte ou miser la totalité de son argent pour peut-être gagner plus.
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Entscheidungsfreiheit macht unfrei
ORF Austria: Wie in kaum einem anderen Land ist in den USA der Glaube verbreitet, dass man selbst des Glückes Schmied ist. Das gilt auch für Amerikanerinnen, die mittlerweile mehrheitlich davon überzeugt sind, dass sie am Arbeitsplatz nicht diskriminiert werden. Wie eine Studie zeigt, kann genau dieser Glaube zur Aufrechterhaltung von Karrierehürden für Frauen beitragen. Die Psychologinnen Nicole Stephens von der Northwestern University und Cynthia Levine von der University of Stanford befragten 117 Frauen, die aus dem Berufsleben ausgeschieden waren, zu ihrem Entscheidungsspielraum zwischen Kind und Beruf.
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Research: The Emotions of Aid
Stanford Social Innovation Review: “One death is a tragedy; 1 million is a statistic,” Joseph Stalin is supposed to have said. The more people we see suffering, the less we care. It’s an unfortunate quirk that psychologists so far have blamed on our brains: Humans are tuned to individuals, the thinking goes; we are just not capable of feeling compassion for whole groups. A new study calls that comfortable conclusion into question. “The collapse of compassion is an active process,” says Daryl Cameron, a doctoral candidate in social psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “It’s not some passive limitation on human experience.