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Stop Being So Self-Conscious
The Atlantic: Can psychological research change your life? Most of the time, no—findings by psychologists don’t usually bear on everyday concerns. My colleagues at Yale, for instance, study topics such as the neuroscience of memory, how babies reason about social groups, and decision-making in psychopaths. Such studies are intended to explore how the mind works, and while their findings might ultimately make the world a better place—at least this is what we say in our grant proposals—that’s not their immediate focus. ...
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Op-Ed Can 1 million women be wrong about happiness and health?
Los Angeles Times: Do happier people live longer? An article in the British medical journal Lancet made headlines this month claiming the answer to that question is no. The researchers based their conclusion on data from the Million Women Study in Britain, and it contradicts a large body of research, not to mention conventional wisdom. Because it was a large study, and the Lancet is a well-regarded publication, the message seemed definitive: Happiness doesn't matter for your health. ... But the Lancet study is far from definitive. Happiness does matter for your health. A lot. The data the researchers analyzed are indeed interesting and potentially valuable.
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How The Food Industry Helps Engineer Our Cravings
NPR: It is no secret that the rise in obesity in America has something to do with food. But how much? And what role does the food industry as a whole play? As part of Here & Now's series this week on obesity,America on the Scale, host Jeremy Hobson spoke with investigative reporter Michael Moss of The New York Times. ... They would hire people like Howard Moskowitz, trained in high math at Queens College and experimental psychology at Harvard. Howard was one of the people responsible for some of the biggest icons in the grocery store. For example, he walked me through his recent creation of a new soda flavor for Dr. Pepper. ...
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The Rise of Hate Search
The New York Times: HOURS after the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 2, and minutes after the media first reported that at least one of the shooters had a Muslim-sounding name, a disturbing number of Californians had decided what they wanted to do with Muslims: kill them. ... In November, there were about 3,600 searches in the United States for “I hate Muslims” and about 2,400 for “kill Muslims.” We suspect these Islamophobic searches represent a similarly tiny fraction of those who had the same thoughts but didn’t drop them into Google.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: The Effects of Attachment Priming on Depressed and Anxious Mood Katherine B. Carnelley, Lorna J. Otway, and Angela C. Rowe Attachment theory suggests that people internalize the quality of early interactions with their primary caregivers, forming an attachment orientation that influences their perception of social interactions throughout their lives. Attachment insecurity has been associated with depression and anxiety; however, the evidence for this link is correlational.
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Can DUI Checkpoints Change Perceptions of the Police?
New Year’s Eve is near, and police will be especially vigilant about pulling over drivers they suspect of being drunk. While traffic stops pop up more frequently around holidays, they actually represent the most common interaction that people have with police and highway patrol officers on any given day of the year. The US Department of Justice reports that in 2011, 86% of people’s most recent contact with the police was during a traffic stop. And a disproportionate number of those pulled over and searched were black, contributing to the public perception of racial bias within law enforcement.
