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The Need to Feel Connected
The Atlantic: The need for people to feel connected runs deep. According to a study conducted at Purdue University, even the gaze of a stranger makes a difference. When strangers pass you by without acknowledging you, you feel more disconnected. And it hurts. The study looked at traffic along a well-traveled path on campus. A research assistant walked along the path and either met a passing person's eyes, met their eyes and smiled, or looked right past the person, essentially ignoring them. The person on the path was then immediately interviewed and asked how disconnected they felt right then.
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Different Bodies, Different Minds
We like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, absorbing information, weighing it carefully, and making thoughtful decisions. But, as it turns out, we’re kidding ourselves. Over the past few decades, scientists have shown there are many different internal and external factors influencing how we think, feel, communicate, and make decisions at any given moment. One particularly powerful influence may be our own bodies, according to new research reviewed in the December issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Fragmented Sleep, Fragmented Mind: A New Theory of Sleep Disruption and Dissociation
This summary has been removed. The original research article on which it is based, “Dissociation and Dissociative Disorders: Challenging Conventional Wisdom,” remains published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, available to journal subscribers and members of APS.
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The Dubious Science of Online Dating
The New York Times: How scientific are the “matching algorithms” of online-dating Web sites? For a fee, many dating sites will collect data about you, crunch the numbers and match you with someone who, as eHarmony puts it, has been “prescreened for deep compatibility with you across 29 dimensions.” Sites like Chemistry, PerfectMatch and GenePartner make similar scientific-sounding claims. But can a mathematical formula really identify pairs of singles who are especially likely to have a successful romantic relationship? We believe the answer is no. It’s hard to be certain, since the sites have not disclosed their algorithms.
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Looking for Facebook friends? Keep it positive
Discovery News: Updating your Facebook status with the torrid details of your bad day? Think twice: People with low self-esteem who post negative details about their lives on Facebook may find their online friends diminishing. Amanda Forest, a graduate student at the University of Waterloo, in Canada, had expected that a new study, which she and her adviser, Joanne Wood, recently had published in Psychological Science, would show that Facebook promoted stronger relationships for those with low self-esteem. Instead, the researchers found that too many negative posts can cause social harm.
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Should Sugar Be Regulated like Alcohol and Tobacco?
TIME: Sugar poses enough health risks that it should be considered a controlled substance just like alcohol and tobacco, contend a team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). In an opinion piece called “The Toxic Truth About Sugar” that was published Feb. 1 in the journal Nature, Robert Lustig, Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis argue that it’s a misnomer to consider sugar just “empty calories.” They write: “There is nothing empty about these calories. A growing body of scientific evidence is showing that fructose can trigger processes that lead to liver toxicity and a host of other chronic diseases.
