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Study Highlights How Moms’ Depression, Anger Stresses Kids
Bloomberg: Even very young children can get stressed by depressed parents who display negative emotions toward them, researchers confirm. The new study included 3-year-old children who were subjected to different harmless, but stress-inducing, situations, such as causing them to become slightly nervous or frustrated. After each stressful event, saliva samples were taken from the children to measure levels of the stress hormone cortisol. The researchers also observed the interaction between children and their parents -- usually the mother -- as they did a task together or as the parent read a book to the child. Read the whole story: Bloomberg
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Formula for a Truly Funny April Fools
Want the recipe for pranks that will have guaranteed laughs on April fool’s day? A study published in Psychological Science found jokes that involve moral or norm violations are funnier but only when the moral violation seems benign, so the audience has psychological distance from it. Check out this video by the Pocket Scientist, George Zaidan, summarizing the study: In one experiment, volunteers were asked read pairs of situations, one of which had a moral violation (e.g. a rabbi promoting pork) while the other did not. The situation with the moral violation was more likely to make the reader laugh.
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How Well Do You Know Your Friends?
Some people know their friends’ triggers well; others have almost no idea what set their friends off. Research suggests that this difference has a noticeable impact on the relationship.
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Something for the weekend
FINANCIAL TIMES: Affairs of the heart is the number one cause for regret among US citizens according to research by a marketing professor and a professor of psychology. Either decisions made and acted upon about a love affair, or inaction over a romance, would appear to give individuals the most heart ache. Other causes for regret include, education, family and career. Neal Roese, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School at Northwestern University and co-author Mike Morrison, a professor of psychology at the University of Illnois at Urbana-Champaign analysed data from a random sample of adult US citizens.
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A Full Bladder Makes You More Responsible
It's not an April fool's joke, we swear! An upcoming study in Psychological Science found that when we’re controlling our bladder, we’re better at controlling ourselves when making decisions about the future. In one experiment, volunteers were asked to either drink a large or small amount of water. Once enough time had passed for the water to reach their bladder, volunteers were asked to choose between receiving a small, but immediate, reward or a larger, but delayed, reward, as a way to assess their self-control. Volunteers who had a full bladder were better at holding out for the larger reward later.
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Think You’ll Ace That Test? Think Again. Then Start Studying
U.S. News & World Report: We hold many beliefs about memory—for instance, if you study more, you learn more. We are also constantly making judgments about particular instances of learning and remembering—I’ll never forget this party! That was easy to understand. I’ll ace it on the test. But do beliefs influence judgments, and how do judgments affect memory performance? “There’s a disconnect among beliefs, judgments, and actual memory,” says Williams College psychologist Nate Kornell. Ask people to predict how or what they will learn and “in many situations, they do a breathtakingly bad job.” Read the whole story: U.S. News & World Report