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Register Now for the 2014 Psychopathy Conference
Registration for the 2014 Psychopathy Conference, to be held May 7–8, 2014, at the Ramada Hotel in Berlin, is now open. An early bird booking discount is available until March 31. The conference will center on the theme of “Psychopathy and Violence Risk Management: Empirical and Practical Challenges.” Go to the conference website for more information.
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Why Me? Perceptions of Justice Influence Pain Experiences
Life has its many twists and turns – to make sense of all of it, people sometimes take a “just world” approach, reasoning that people get more or less what they deserve. But there are some experiences – like chronic, intractable pain – that are difficult to reconcile with a sense of justice. “We learn that justice is important, but there is no universal consensus on what is just or unjust or guidance on how to respond to injustice,” write researchers Joanna McParland and Christopher Eccelston in a new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science.
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Can Having a Foreign Accent Hurt Your Career?
English is increasingly considered to be the global language of business. But people who speak it as a second language are generally passed over for top managerial jobs and executive positions, studies have shown. New psychological research reveals the factors underlying this glass ceiling. A trio of researchers led by Laura Huang, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, hypothesized that non-native speakers of English are perceived as having weak political skills — which is considered essential for career success.
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Religious Infusion Predicts Intergroup Conflict Around the World
For many people, religion is deeply ingrained in their day-to-day existence. It supports their faith and spirituality, and it provides friendship and a sense of community. But religion can also contribute to conflict, as in the Central African Republic, where Muslim and Christian groups are currently enmeshed in a violent struggle for power. Psychological scientist Steven Neuberg of Arizona State University and colleagues wanted to examine what effect religious infusion — the degree to which religion influences the everyday lives of groups and their individual members — might have on intergroup conflict. Their findings are published in the January 2014 issue of Psychological Science.
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Apply Now for the NIDCR ‘Building Bridges’ APS Convention Travel Award
For the second year in a row, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) is offering a travel award to approximately five APS poster submitters. This award is aimed at helping bring together two research communities that might not at first seem to have much overlap: oral health scientists and psychological scientists. To be considered, the posters must either showcase a study directly related to oral health or describe a study indirectly relevant to oral health that attempts to bring together researchers in oral health and psychological scientists.
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Chris Christie and the Science of the Group Mind
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie finds himself in a position similar to many government and corporate leaders — apologizing for the misdeeds of his deputies, while at the same time claiming to have been misled by them. It is, in many ways, the safest position for an executive embroiled in an organizational scandal: Christie can cast himself as honorable by claiming responsibility, but not complicity. From Enron to the IRS, a number of companies and government entities have come under fire because of the missteps of senior executives. Like Christie, people at the top often plead ignorance to the actions of their deputies.