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A Thirst for Excitement Is Hidden in Your Genes
Sensation seeking—the urge to do exciting things—has been linked to dopamine, a chemical that carries messages in your brain. For a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, scientists analyzed genes in the dopamine system and found a group of mutations that help predict whether someone is inclined toward sensation seeking. Sensation seeking has been linked to a range of behavior disorders, such as drug addiction. It isn't all bad, though. "Not everyone who's high on sensation seeking becomes a drug addict. They may become an Army Ranger or an artist.
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Powerful Posturing
Study co-authored by Columbia and Harvard faculty finds that a simple posture change transforms hormone levels in a matter of minutes – and literally makes people more powerful Humans and other animals express power through open, expansive postures, and powerlessness through closed, constrictive postures. Forthcoming in Psychological Science will be a paper that reveals how open postures can actually cause one to grow in confidence and power.
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Dirty Hands, Dirty Mouths: U-M Study Finds a Need to Clean the Body Part That Lies
Apparently your mom had it right when she threatened to wash your mouth out with soap if you talked dirty. Lying really does create a desire to clean the "dirty" body part, according to a University of Michigan study. "The references to 'dirty hands' or 'dirty mouths' in everyday language suggest that people think about abstract issues of moral purity in terms of more concrete experiences with physical purity," said Spike W.S. Lee, a U-M doctoral candidate in psychology, who conducted the study with Norbert Schwarz, a psychologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR), the Ross School of Business, and the U-M psychology department.
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Heartbreak Puts the Brakes on Your Heart
Social rejection isn't just emotionally upsetting; it also upsets your heart. A new study finds that being rejected by another person makes your heart rate drop for a moment. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Research has shown that the brain processes physical and social pain in some of the same regions. Bregtje Gunther Moor, Eveline A. Crone, and Maurits W. van der Molen of the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University in the Netherlands wanted to find out how social pain affects you physically. For the study, volunteers were asked to send the researchers a photograph of themselves.
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Family, Culture Affect Whether Intelligence Leads to Education
Intelligence isn't the only thing that predicts how much education people get; family, culture, and other factors are important, too. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, compares identical and fraternal twins in Minnesota and Sweden to explore how genetic and environmental factors involved in educational differ in countries with different educational systems. Family background can get an education even for people of low intelligence, the authors conclude—but helps much more in Minnesota, than in Sweden. The genetic similarity of a pair of twins depends on whether they're identical or fraternal.
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Current Decisions Shape Your Future Preferences
Psychologists have known for a long time that after you make a choice, you adjust your opinion to think better of the thing you chose. Now a new study has found that this is true even if you don't know the options that you're choosing between. People change their minds about a choice after they make it. If you ask someone how he feels about Athens and Paris, he might rate them the same. But after you make him choose one as a vacation destination, he'll rate that city higher. This is thought to be a way to reduce the psychological tension that is created by rejecting one perfectly reasonable alternative and picking another one.