-
28th International Congress of Applied Psychology
The 28th International Congress of Applied Psychology is July 8–13, 2014, at the Palais des Congrès in Paris, France. 5,000 attendees are expected to attend. For more information, visit www.icap2014.com or email [email protected].
-
When Faced With a Hard Decision, People Tend to Blame Fate
Life is full of decisions. Some, like what to eat for breakfast, are relatively easy. Others, like whether to move cities for a new job, are quite a bit more difficult. Difficult decisions tend to make us feel stressed and uncomfortable – we don’t want to feel responsible if the outcome is less than desirable. New research suggests that we deal with such difficult decisions by shifting responsibility for the decision to fate. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Fate is a ubiquitous supernatural belief, spanning time and place,” write researchers Aaron Kay, Simone Tang, and Steven Shepherd of Duke University.
-
Talking About Social Class Boosts Grades of First-Generation College Students
A novel one-hour intervention focused on discussions of social class can significantly narrow the achievement gap between first-generation college students and students who have a least one parent with a college degree, researchers find. The study is forthcoming Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The key to the one-time intervention’s success was raising students’ awareness of the ways that social class shapes the college experience, according to Northwestern psychological scientist Nicole Stephens.
-
How Your Culture Affects Your Work Attitude
After claiming to have fostered a million marriages, eHarmony is extending its online dating formula to employee recruitment, helping job-hunters and employers find the perfect match. It may be a stretch to liken a great job to a soulmate. But just as eHarmony tests potential matches on various dimensions of compatibility, so do organizational psychologists identify the seeds of an optimal employee-employer relationship. Researchers have amassed decades worth of data showing what makes a professional “match made in heaven.” They refer to this measure as person-environment (P-E) fit — the degree of compatibility between individuals and some aspect of their work environment.
-
New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Mismatch or Cumulative Stress: The Pathway to Depression Is Conditional on Attention Style Esther Nederhof, Johan Ormel, and Albertine J. Oldehinkel It has been suggested that people use their childhood environment to predict how their future environment will be and develop accordingly. However, on the basis of this theory, a mismatch between a childhood and an adult environment could be detrimental. Adolescents were split into attention-style groups (shifting, sustained, or more balanced) and were assessed for early life stress, recent life stress, and major depression.
-
Behavior’s Influence on Biology
One of the basic tenets of psychological science holds that the biology of our brains heavily influences our actions, behaviors, judgments, and more. But what if we reverse that premise and examine an opposite supposition: that our choices and decisions may influence our physical neural structure? Several prominent psychological scientists examine this bidirectional equation. The following researchers will speak: Darlene D. Francis, University of California, Berkeley. Her research delves into how biological, psychological, and social developments throughout people’s lives combine to influence their susceptibility to disease or illness. Adam H.