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When Teams Lose, Fans Tackle Fatty Foods
The New York Times: When Vinnie Richichi started watching the Pittsburgh Steelers’ home opener against the Tennessee Titans last Sunday, he was feeling great. After all, the Steelers had won their first home game six years in a row. Then things indeed went south. “The worse they looked, the more I kept going to the fridge,” recalled Mr. Richichi, a co-host of a sports talk show on KDKA-FM in Pittsburgh. “First a couple of Hot Pockets. By the second quarter I threw in a box of White Castle hamburgers. As the game progressed, I just went through the refrigerator: the more fear, the more emotion, I’m chomping down. But I’m not going near the salad or the yogurt.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: Childhood Adversity and Cumulative Life Stress: Risk Factors for Cancer-Related Fatigue Julienne E. Bower, Alexandra D. Crosswell, and George M. Slavich Fatigue is a side effect experienced by almost all who undergo cancer treatment. Despite its prevalence, however, little is known about risk factors for experiencing persistent fatigue. Breast cancer survivors with or without cancer-related fatigue completed a childhood trauma questionnaire and the Stress and Adversity Inventory -- a novel online stress assessment that measures a person's lifetime exposure to different stressors.
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Fear of holes: new research in to most common phobia you’ve never heard of
The New Zealand Herald: Does the sight of bubbles, crumpets and aerated chocolate freak you out? New research hints at the cause of this unusual phobia that makes people panic at the sight of a cluster of holes. Trypophobia is "the most common phobia you have never heard of," said study researcher Geoff Cole, a psychologist at the University of Essex, in England, who suffers from the fear himself. The fear - which can cause symptoms like migraines, panic attacks, hot sweats and a racing heart - may steam from a visual resemblance to poisonous animals, Live Science reports.
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Study: Sadism more common than people think
Salon: People who enjoy being cruel are scarily prevalent, new research says. There may be more sadists lurking in our midst than we’d like to think, according to a new study from the University of British Columbia and the University of Texas at El Paso. After offering a group of college students the chance to play exterminator and kill live bugs, researchers found “acts of apparent cruelty” and evidence of “everyday sadism”-a less pathological variety of deriving pleasure from being cruel. More than 70 psychology students participated in the study, which they thought was about “personality and tolerance for challenging jobs.” Read the whole story: Salon
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Matters of the Heart: Whither the Type A Personality?
The Huffington Post: I first studied psychological science in the 1970s, and one of the most popular ideas at that time was the Type A personality. Two cardiologists, Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman, had made the case that a certain type of person -- competitive, driven, hurried, easily angered -- had a much higher risk of heart attack and heart disease than did easy-going types, which they labeled Type B. The idea of Type A personality took hold in the public imagination, and it's still heard in the common parlance today. The concept was scientifically controversial from the start, but it did provoke a lot of debate -- and an explosion of research.
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A Map for the Future of Neuroscience
The New Yorker: On Monday, the National Institutes of Health released a fifty-eight-page report on the future of neuroscience—the first substantive step in developing President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative, which seeks to “revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury.” Assembled by an advisory panel of fifteen scientists led by Cori Bargmann, of Rockefeller University, and William Newsome, of Stanford, the report assesses the state of neuroscience and offers a vision for the field’s future. ...
