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Making the Most of It: Study Reveals Motivating Factor for Enjoying the Present
It is common knowledge that when something becomes scarce, its value goes up. This concept does not just apply to material goods—time can be an extremely valuable commodity, especially when it is in short supply. According to a new study, thinking that we have a limited amount of time remaining to participate in an activity makes us appreciate the activity that much more and motivates us to make the most of it. Psychologist Jaime L. Kurtz from Pomona College investigated how our behavior and attitude towards an activity change when there is a limited amount of time remaining to engage in it. A group of college seniors participated in this study, which occurred 6 weeks prior to graduation.
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Study Finds We Are Better Able to Detect Racial Tension in Members of Our Racial Group
In March of 2008, in a speech addressing contemporary racial tensions in America, then-Senator Barack Obama suggested that there is a “chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.” Could this be true? Is it more difficult for members of different races to understand each others’ emotions and intentions? Psychologist Heather M. Gray from Boston University, along with Wendy Berry Mendes and Carrigan Denny-Brown of Harvard University, investigated whether the ability to detect a person’s anxiety declines when perceptions are made across the racial divide.
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Prejudice Affects Perception of Ethnic Minority Faces
Prejudice can be a powerful influence, biasing the way we think about and act towards ethnic minorities. Now, a new study suggests that this bias even influences what people believe the faces of members belonging to specific ethnic minority groups look like. Psychologist Ron Dotsch and his colleagues from the Behavioral Science Institute at Radboud University in The Netherlands, investigated how study participants view Moroccans, a highly stigmatized immigrant group in The Netherlands. The researchers assessed the participants’ prejudice levels via the Implicit Association Test, which measured the strength of the volunteers’ negative or positive associations with Moroccan names.
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Uncertainty Can Be More Stressful Than Clear Negative Feedback
We are faced with uncertainty every day. Will our investments pay off? Will we get the promotions we are hoping for? When faced with the unknown, most people experience some degree of anxiety and discomfort. Exactly how much anxiety someone experiences during uncertain times depends on his or her personality profile. In particular, it is the personality trait of Neuroticism that predicts how distressed people will be when confronted with the unknown.
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The Psychology of Déjà vu
All of us have experienced being in a new place and feeling certain that we have been there before. This mysterious feeling, commonly known as déjà vu, occurs when we feel that a new situation is familiar, even if there is evidence that the situation could not have occurred previously. For a long time, this eerie sensation has been attributed to everything from paranormal disturbances to neurological disorders. However, in recent years, as more scientists began studying this phenomenon, a number of theories about déjà vu have emerged, suggesting that it is not merely a glitch in our brain’s memory system. A new report by Colorado State University psychologist Anne M.
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Bound by Attention: Bringing Rats and Humans Together
When picking through a basket of fruit, it doesn’t seem very difficult to recognize a green pear from a green apple. This is easy, thanks to “feature binding” – a process by which our brain combines all of the specific features of an object and gives us a complete and unified picture of it. For example, upon first seeing the fruit basket, our brain immediately gets to work, connecting (or binding) information about each fruit’s shape to its color to ensure that we select the green apple we are craving instead of a green pear. However, if our brain gets distracted, our ability for feature binding is reduced and we may inadvertently end up biting into the green pear instead.
