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The dark side of happiness
Irish Medical Times: I knew it all along. Happiness kills. A study of traits in children which may lead to longer or shorter lives is quite conclusive in its findings: happy, cheerful youngsters are doomed to an early grave (see article in latest Perspectives on Psychological Science, May 18, 2011, vol. 6 no. 3 222-233 (doi: 10.1177/1745691611406927). The results are surprising — to some people at least. Not to me and other lifelong dysfunctionals. Remarks in a school report which state that the brat in question is ‘very cheery’ or ‘very cheerful’ or ‘happy’ are the kiss of death. Read more at : Irish Medical Times
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Stereotypical men, women more realistic
Times of India: The psychologists said that it is a very difficult skill to master, but stereotypical male and female are almost always accurate in their predictions of who wants to date them. In Psychological Science, psychology professor Mitja Back and his colleagues report that they studied several hundred participants in a German speed-dating group. They asked each participant to take a psychological test aimed at assessing how "sociosexually unrestricted" the men were, and how "agreeable" the women were. Read more: Times of India
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Monkeys Might Be More Logical Than We Think
You see a big cat nursing a kitten, and you assume Cat A is Cat B’s mother. Then you see a bird dropping worms in a smaller bird’s mouth. Different content, different context, but same relationship—you conclude that Big Bird is Little Bird’s mom. This is an analogy—a relationship between relationships. What is behind this ability—and is it uniquely human? “There is a long debate as to whether this ability is dependent on language,” says Center for Research in Cognitive Neurosciences and University of Provence cognitive psychologist Joël Fagot. “It has been shown in apes who have been language trained.” But can animals perceive analogies without language?
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Plan Your Way to Less Stress, More Happiness
TIME: A recent survey by psychologist and self-help author Robert Epstein found that 25% of our happiness hinges on how well we're able to manage stress. The next logical question is, of course, how best can we reduce our stress? Epstein's data, which he presented last month at the Western Psychological Association meeting in Los Angeles, was intended to help answer that question. It involved 3,000 participants in the U.S. and 29 other countries, who responded to an online questionnaire.
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Violent Video Games Linked to Increased Aggression
MSN Health: Violent video games trigger aggression among those who play them, according to a new University of Missouri study. Such players showed more hostility because their brains had become less responsive, or desensitized, to violence -- a response that the researchers linked to increased aggression. "From a psychological perspective, video games are excellent teaching tools because they reward players for engaging in certain types of behavior. Unfortunately, in many popular video games, the behavior is violence," study co-author Bruce Bartholow, an associate professor of psychology at UM College of Arts and Sciences, said in a university news release. Read more: MSN Health
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How death affects life
Examiner.com How you think about death affects how you behave in life. That's the conclusion of a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science During the study, researchers had people either think about death in the abstract or in a specific, personal way and found that people who thought specifically about their own death were more likely to demonstrate concern for society by donating blood. Read more at: Examiner.com