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Helping Others Dampens the Effects of Everyday Stress
Providing help to friends, acquaintances, and even strangers can mitigate the impact of daily stressors on our emotions and our mental health, according to research published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: When Delays Improve Memory: Stabilizing Memory in Children May Require Time Kevin P. Darby and Vladimir M. Sloutsky The learning of new information often reduces memory for older information -- something called retroactive interference. Although retroactive interference is generally small in adults, children can experience catastrophic interference. In a series of studies, children learned connections between pairs of objects and a cartoon character during three learning phases.
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Why Office Jerks Get Ahead
People who score high on some sinister personality traits appear to have better career prospects, according to a scientific review.
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Risky Business: Teens Brains Behind the Wheel
Teen drivers are notorious for their bad decisions behind the wheel. According to the US Centers for Disease Control, the risk of car crashes is higher among 16-19-year-olds than among any other age group. In fact, per mile driven, teen drivers are nearly three times more likely than drivers aged 20 and older to be in a fatal crash. You might think that a more developmentally mature brain would guarantee more sensible decision-making in teen drivers, but a new study suggests just the opposite.
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Examining the Mechanics of Different Types of Choice
Have you ever noticed your attention gravitating toward the first or last item on a menu, or toward the centrally placed items on a grocery store shelf? Why does placement influence our choices and decisions? In a recent Perspectives on Psychological Science article, APS Fellow Maya Bar-Hillel (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel) tells the tale of how she came to better understand how position influences our choices and shares what she has learned about the circumstances under which people chose certain items. In the early 2000s, Bar-Hillel supervised a doctoral student who was examining how test takers answer multiple-choice questions.
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Maximizing the Gains and Minimizing the Pains of Diversity
For organizations, diversity pays off. Empirical research has shown that diversity increases creativity and innovation and promotes better decision making because it spurs deeper information processing and complex thinking.
