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What Do Spoilers Spoil?
The New York Times: Over 10 percent of the comments on my “Hunger Games” column brought up the question of spoiler alerts. “Haven’t you heard of a spoiler alert?”, one exasperated reader asked. Another reader, Jim, reported that he was “trying rapidly to withdraw my forward of the article to my wife who’s in the midst of the 2nd book.” He didn’t want his wife’s experience spoiled as it would be, he assumed, if she knew how things turned out. A recent study indicates that Jim’s assumption may be incorrect.
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Reduce Dumb Decisions by Thinking in a Foreign Language
ABC News: Forget about dropping that Korean or Spanish or Japanese lesson, and not just because sticking with it might make it easier to navigate a polyglot world. It can pay off in other ways too. People who think problems through in a foreign language – and it doesn’t matter which one – make more rational decisions and are more apt to take smart risks, especially in the financial realm, according to a recent study in the journal Psychological Science. Left to follow their gut instincts, people are naturally loss-averse, sometimes myopically so, and often pass up favorable opportunities as a result, says Boaz Keysar, a psychologist at the University of Chicago and lead author of the study.
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Facebook users let secrets out
New Zealand Herald: What you post, comment on and say on Facebook reveals more about your self-esteem than you perhaps realise, psychologists say. In theory, the social networking website seems beneficial for people with low self-esteem, giving them the opportunity to share experiences, thoughts and likes with other users. But a North American study found that, in practice, those with low self-esteem tended to behave counterproductively, bombarding their online friends with "negative tidbits" about their lives and making themselves less likeable.
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Convention Video Blog: When Chaos Comes Home
The cameras are rolling at the APS 24th Annual Convention in Chicago, Illinois. Alexander P. Kempe of Metropolitan State University presented his research "When Chaos Comes Home" at Poster Session I on Thursday, May 24. Alexander P. Kempe Metropolitan State University Kasandra Danielson Metropolitan State University Kerry S. Kleyman Metropolitan State University Soldiers have always struggled with readjusting to life after war. The current study evaluated over 400 soldiers using Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking Scale and Courbasson’s Reflective Activity Scale. As expected, results indicated significantly higher sensation seeking for combat versus non-combat soldiers.
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APS Honors 2012 Award Recipients
The 24th Annual APS Convention kicked off with a ceremony honoring the recipients of its 2012 awards for 2012. APS President Douglas L. Medin of Northwestern University welcomed the nearly 4,000 psychological scientists attending the convention. Richard Heimberg, from Temple University, president of the Society for the Study of Clinical Psychology, presented the society's Distinguished Scientist Award to William E. Pelham from Florida International University. The Albert Bandura Graduate Research Award went to Chris Conway from University of California, Los Angeles for his work on stress generation theory. Psi Chi Past President Michael D.
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Federal Funding for Basic Psychological Science
With tight budgets and dramatic cuts in federal funding, can researchers realistically hope for government funding for their work? This was the topic of conversation at the Federal Funding for Basic Psychological Science Workshop, held Thursday in Chicago at the 24th APS Annual Convention. The short answer is yes. As Rebecca A. Ferrer (National Cancer Institute), Lisbeth Nielsen (National Institute on Ageing), Melissa W.
