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Perspectives Looks Back Over 25 Years of Science
As APS celebrates its 25th anniversary, the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science is featuring a series of special sections that take a look at how the field has changed over the last 25 years. The special section in the September issue includes articles that explore psychology as a multilevel science, advances in eyewitness science, the emergence of relationship science, and developments in the area of cognitive psychology. 25 Years Toward a Multilevel Science Marilynn B.
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The Influence of Children’s Personalities on Interventions for Aggression
All children are aggressive at one time or another; however, a small group of children display pervasive and unremitting levels of aggression. Children who display high levels of aggression are at risk for a number of negative outcomes such as school failure, drug use, and delinquency. Interventions to reduce aggressive behavior are often instituted at a young age, as nipping this behavior in the bud can prevent children from developing persistent conduct problems later in life. In the past decade, much research has been conducted on the effectiveness of interventions with children.
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Can Emotional Intelligence Be Taught?
The New York Times: One day last spring, James Wade sat cross-legged on the carpet and called his kindergarten class to order. Lanky and soft-spoken, Wade has a gentle charisma well suited to his role as a teacher of small children: steady, rather than exuberant. When a child performs a requested task, like closing the door after recess, he will often acknowledge the moment by murmuring, “Thank you, sweet pea,” in a mild Texas drawl.
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High Earnings Can Hamper Happiness
Behavioral experiments suggest that the modern drive to amass wealth is a holdover from the days when people sought to accumulate resources not for the sake of happiness, but for sheer survival.
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The New Science of Mind
The New York Times: These days it is easy to get irritated with the exaggerated interpretations of brain imaging — for example, that a single fMRI scan can reveal our innermost feelings — and with inflated claims about our understanding of the biological basis of our higher mental processes. Such irritation has led a number of thoughtful people to declare that we can never achieve a truly sophisticated understanding of the biological foundation of complex mental activity.
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Older Adults Gauge Their Partner’s Feelings Through Knowing, Not Seeing
Compared to younger adults, older people are less adept at reading emotion in their spouse’s face. But when their spouse isn’t present, older and younger adults are equally able to discern their significant others’ moods. These findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that older adults retain the ability to make accurate judgments about others' emotions using their acquired knowledge, but not sensory cues. “When judging others’ emotions in real life, people do not exclusively rely on emotional expressions,” says lead researcher Antje Rauers of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Germany.