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New Research From Psychological Science
A sample of new research exploring experimenter expectations and social priming, loving-kindness meditation and positive emotions, and vicarious optimism.
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Does Bad Air Create Bad Behavior?
Looking for an excuse the next time you get caught doing something unethical? If you live in a highly polluted city, you may be in luck. New research offers evidence that air pollution inspires unethical behavior, ranging from low-stakes cheating to criminal activity. It reports this is likely due to polluted air increasing personal anxiety, which can throw people's moral compasses out of whack. "This research reveals that air pollution may have potential ethical costs that go beyond its well-known toll on health and the environment," lead author Jackson Lu of Columbia Business School said in announcing the results.
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Want to be happier? Think like a bronze medalist
Athletes who win silver medals must be happier than those who win bronze, right? Not exactly. People in one study rated athletes’ emotions — based on their facial expressions — immediately after they learned where they placed. On a 1- to 10-point agony-to-ecstasy scale, bronze medalists scored 7.1 on average, while the silver medalists averaged just 4.8. Later, on the awards podiums, the bronze medalists still got higher happiness scores, 5.7 to 4.3. Why? Psychologists believe it stems from “counterfactual thinking,” or imagining the outcome that didn’t happen.
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Love and dating after the Tinder revolution
How many couples will have met online this Valentine's Day? More than ever before is the safe answer, as online dating continues to sweep the world. But is data crunching the best way to find a partner? In the future, a computer program could dictate who you date, and for how long. This was the premise of a December 2017 episode of Black Mirror, the dystopian sci-fi TV series. But technology already has radically changed romance, with online dating growing massively in popularity ever since Match.com blazed a trail in the mid-90s. Now apps, such as Tinder, with their speedy account set-ups and "swipe to like" approach, have taken dating to another level.
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The First Step Toward a Personal Memory Maker?
Decent memory is a matter of livelihood, of independence, most of all of identity. Human memory is the ghost in the neural machine, a widely distributed, continually changing, multidimensional conversation among cells that can reproduce both the capital of Kentucky and the emotional catacombs of that first romance. The news last week that scientists had developed a brain implant that boosts memory — an implantable “cognitive prosthetic,” in the jargon — should be astounding even to the cynical. App developers probably are already plotting yet another brain-exercise product based on the latest science.
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Medical Professionals Benefit from Self-Directed ‘Job Crafting’
Employees can shape their environments to improve their experience at work and their performance.
