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Insiders and Outsiders
When social groups interact, notions of “insiders” and “outsiders” develop. Using a variety of approaches – psychological, physiological, and neurobiological – Valerie Purdie-Vaughns seeks to understand relationships between social groups and reduce intergroup bias and conflict. In particular, she investigates how minority and majority groups interact, focusing on experiments that closely mirror real-world scenarios. For instance, several recent studies have examined how the anxiety of feeling stigmatized can lead to dysregulated eating and psychological distress.
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BCS Seeking Program Directors in 4 Different Programs
The National Science Foundation is seeking candidates for four program director positions in its Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science (SBE). The job openings are for program directors for the Biological Anthropology Program, the Cognitive Neuroscience Program, the Geography and Spatial Sciences Program, and the Social Psychology Program.
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No Pictures, Please: Taking Photos May Impede Memory of Museum Tour
Visit a museum these days and you’ll see people using their smartphones and cameras to take pictures of works of art, archeological finds, historical artifacts, and any other object that strikes their fancy. While taking a picture might seem like a good way to preserve the moment, new research suggests that museum-goers may want to put their cameras down. In a new study, psychological scientist Linda Henkel of Fairfield University presents data showing that participants had worse memory for objects, and for specific object details, when they took photos of them. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Below-Baseline Suppression of Competitors During Interference Resolution by Younger but Not Older Adults M. Karl Healey, K. W. Joan Ngo, and Lynn Hasher Researchers have argued that successful retrieval of a memory requires suppression of competing information. The authors examined the suppression abilities of older and younger adults using a novel paradigm that allowed them to study below-baseline suppression, which is considered a hallmark of true suppression effects.
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Stress, Poverty, and Ethnicity Linked Among Young Parents
An avalanche of chronic stress — driven by concerns ranging from parenting to discrimination — disproportionately affects poor mothers and fathers, according to the first results from a comprehensive multi-state study. "Those who are poor have much higher stress than those who are not. In fact, being poor was associated with more of almost every kind of stress," said lead researcher Chris Dunkel Schetter, a professor of psychology in UCLA's College of Letters and Science. The report found that although people with higher incomes have lower levels of stress overall, stress levels aren't reduced as much for higher-income African-Americans as they are for higher-income whites.
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Women Find Sexually Explicit Ads Unappealing — Unless the Price Is Right
Sexual imagery is often used in magazine and TV ads, presumably to help entice buyers to purchase a new product. But new research suggests that women tend to find ads with sexual imagery off-putting, unless the advertised item is priced high enough. The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal that women’s otherwise negative attitudes about sexual imagery can be softened when the images are paired with a product that connotes high worth.