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Need to remember something? Think of the dentist or dead cats
MSNBC: If you want to remember new information, looking at photographs that stir up negative emotions may do the trick, suggests new research from Psychological Science. Yeah, we know that sounds counterintuitive -- but it appears to work. When study participants viewed color images of a dead cat, a pointed gun, or a person getting a dental exam -- pictures that evoke negative feelings -- it actually improved their recall of recently learned information. In this case, 40 college students were asked to bone up on 100 vocabulary words in Swahili along with their English translations.
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Money and Mimicry
“Money, money, money Must be funny Money, money, money Always sunny In the rich man’s world.” -ABBA, 1976 We rely on money in our day-to-day life and it is constantly in our minds. After all, money makes the world go round, doesn’t it? Now, a new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, tries to better understand the psychological effect of money and how it affects our behavior, feelings and emotions.
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Fast and furious: Belief, catharsis and video violence
The Supreme Court’s decision today to overturn California’s ban on selling violent video games to children will no doubt rekindle debate about catharsis. Catharsis is the notion that we can dampen our negative emotions by acting them out or witnessing them in our arts and entertainment—and that this is a healthy thing to do. The scientific evidence is fairly heavily stacked against this idea. Indeed there is evidence that indulging our anger and aggression can increase—not decrease—those destructive emotions. Even so, a lot of people still believe in catharsis. They believe that pummeling punching bags and watching Fight Club and cursing at the universe is cleansing.
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Why Does a Baby Strike Out in Anger? A Study Looks At The Family Risks
A baby is set on the floor to play with other babies and she yanks a toy away from a playmate or shoves him in frustration or anger. What makes some infants aggressive? Does something adverse happen in the womb? Is it life with Mom and Dad that ramps up their anti-social behavior? Or both? These are the questions that a group of Cardiff University psychologists—Dale Hay, Lisa Mundy, Siwan Roberts, Raffaella Carta, Cerith Waters, Oliver Perra, Roland Jones, Ian Jones, Ian Goodyer, Gordon Harold, Anita Thapar, and Stephanie van Goozen—are exploring in a large-scale, nationally representative longitudinal study of 271 British infants and their parents.
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Shyness: Evolutionary Tactic?
The New York Times: A BEAUTIFUL woman lowers her eyes demurely beneath a hat. In an earlier era, her gaze might have signaled a mysterious allure. But this is a 2003 advertisement for Zoloft, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (S.S.R.I.) approved by the F.D.A. to treat social anxiety disorder. “Is she just shy? Or is it Social Anxiety Disorder?” reads the caption, suggesting that the young woman is not alluring at all. She is sick. But is she? It is possible that the lovely young woman has a life-wrecking form of social anxiety. There are people too afraid of disapproval to venture out for a job interview, a date or even a meal in public.
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Those Graphic New Cigarette Labels Won’t Help, Psychology Says
Discover Magazine: What’s the News: Starting in September 2012, the FDA will require every pack of cigarettes sold in the US to be emblazoned with a large, text-and-image health warning, similar to the labels already seen in Canada, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and several other countries. The FDA unveiled the nine label designs earlier this week; several are quite graphic, including photos of cancerous lungs and lips and a man exhaling smoke through his tracheotomy hole. Read more: Discover Magazine
