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The Countries Where People Are the Most Emotionally Complex
The Atlantic: Think of the last piece of big news you got. How did you feel about it? Happy? Sad? Angry? Worried? Excited? Grateful? A little bit of all of the above? Experiencing multiple emotions at once may make it seem like you don’t actually know just how you feel about something—that you’re ambivalent, or indecisive, or wishy-washy. Psychologists would say it just means you’re emotionally complex. And according to a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, emotional complexity varies a lot between countries. ...
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Middle school: The new high school for moms
CNN: If you had to guess what are the most difficult years for a mother, what might you say? Infancy? Sure, dealing with a newborn is beyond stressful, as you try to figure out how to care for an infant and adjust to a new role all on zero sleep. It would be no surprise if those years were the most taxing. But I -- and probably many of you reading this -- would guess adolescence, namely the high school years, which I might add I am already dreading. ...
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: Daily Actigraphy Profiles Distinguish Depressive and Interepisode States in Bipolar Disorder Anda Gershon, Nilam Ram, Sheri L. Johnson, Allison G. Harvey, and Jamie M. Zeitzer Bipolar disorder (BD) is characterized, in part, by disruption in physical activity; however, few studies have adequately tracked activity levels in BD to see if they are truly an indicator of mood states. Participants with and without BD wore a watch-based activity-monitoring device for 3 months. Participants completed demographic, symptom, and medication assessments at the beginning of each month.
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How to Become the Smartest Group in the Room
You’re a manager tasked with putting together a team to tackle a new project. What qualities do you look for in creating such a crack team? Research from psychological scientists Anita Williams Woolley (Carnegie Mellon University), Ishani Aggarwal (Fundação Getulio Vargas), and Thomas Malone (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) finds that the smartest groups don’t necessarily have the highest IQs – rather, what they do tend to have are excellent social skills.
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Teens Take Fewer Risks Around Slightly Older Adults
Adolescents are known risk takers, especially when they're surrounded by same-aged peers. But new research suggests that being in a group that includes just one slightly older adult might decrease teens' propensity to engage in risky behavior. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "The take home message is that decision making in groups of adolescents and young adults is more prudent when a somewhat older adult is present," explains psychological scientist and lead researcher Laurence Steinberg of Temple University.
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The Knicks Won. Let’s Gamble!
Pacific Standard: The lottery, it's been said, is a tax for people who are bad at math, yet quite a lot of presumably intelligent people take the risk buying lottery tickets at least once in a while. Maybe they think it's fun, maybe it's an addiction, or maybe some people really are just that bad at math. Or, a new study argues, maybe it's just a sunny day, the Knicks won, and people are feeling good. "People in a good mood are more willing to gamble—or, more broadly, to accept risky bets," write neuroscientists Ross Otto, Stephen Fleming, and Paul Glimcher in Psychological Science.
