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APA Division 1 Call for Nominations for Awards for Year 2014
Deadline: February 15, 2014 The Society for General Psychology, Division One of the American Psychological Association is conducting its Year 2014 awards competition, including the William James Book Award for a recent book that serves to integrate material across psychological subfields or to provide coherence to the diverse subject matter of psychology, the Ernest R. Hilgard Award for a Lifetime Career Contribution to General Psychology, the George A. Miller Award for an Outstanding Recent Article on General Psychology, and the Arthur W. Staats Lecture for Unifying Psychology, which is an American Psychological Foundation Award managed by the Society for General Psychology.
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Living Through War Leads to In-Group Solidarity
War experiences have a long-term effect on human psychology, shifting people’s motivations toward greater equality for members of their own group, according to research forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. According to study co-author Joseph Henrich of the University of British Columbia, “these effects have the potential to explain both why conflict sometimes leads to cycles of war and sometimes stimulates nation-building in its wake.” “Our research shows that exposure to war affects human psychology in specific ways,” says psychological scientist and economist Michal Bauer of Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.
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“Please Feed Me”: The Power of Putting a Human Face on Social Causes
Companies often put a personal face on products to connect with consumers. The same idea may also work for social causes, like recycling and energy conservation, according to a series of studies.
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Social Status Woes: Facial Structure Predicts Strategy for Getting to the Top
Whether you’re low on the totem pole at a new firm or a raking in a piddling salary in a dead-end job, the thought of climbing the social status ladder is intimidating. It often seems like clawing -- rather than climbing -- might be the most effective way to get the social status boost that comes with a promotion offer or salary hike. Oddly enough, for a particular subset of men with greater facial width-to-height ratios (FWHR) -- a physical sign of high testosterone levels -- aggressive behavior might actually be a go-to strategy for getting what they want.
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Touch May Alleviate Existential Fears for People With Low Self-Esteem
As human beings, we all know that we are going to die some day. Most of us deal with this knowledge by trying to live meaningful lives, but people with low self-esteem tend not to see their lives as particularly meaningful. Now, research suggests that touch may help people with low self-esteem in confronting their own mortality. “Even fleeting and seemingly trivial instances of interpersonal touch may help people to deal more effectively with existential concern,” explains psychological scientist and lead researcher Sander Koole of VU University Amsterdam.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: The Stability of Intelligence From Age 11 to Age 90 Years: The Lothian Birth Cohort of 1921 Ian J. Deary, Alison Pattie, and John M. Starr How stable is intelligence over the lifespan? Participants completed the Moray House Test No. 12 (MHT) -- a paper-and-pencil test of general mental ability -- at ages 11 and 90. MHT scores at age 11 and at age 90 were significantly correlated. MHT performance at age 90 was also significantly correlated with performance on other commonly used assessments of cognitive functioning at age 90, indicating that intelligence has moderately high stability across the lifespan.
