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Anxiety Does Not Cause Bad Results in Exams
Exams are nerve-racking, especially for those already of an anxious disposition. The silence of the hall; the ticking of the clock; the beady eye of the invigilator; the smug expression of the person sitting at the neighbouring desk who has finished 15 minutes early. It therefore seems hardly surprising that those who worry about taking tests do systematically worse than those who do not. What is, perhaps, surprising, according to research published recently in Psychological Science by Maria Theobald at the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education and her colleagues, is that it is not the pressure of the exam hall which causes the problem. It is the pressure of revision.
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Can’t Sleep? Try Sticking Your Head in the Freezer.
A good night’s sleep can make us more empathetic, more creative, better parents and better partners, according to Aric Prather, a psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco who treats insomnia and is the author of the new book “The Sleep Prescription.” Sleep can help us manage stress; it can make us competent and capable and better able to take on the day. But Dr. Prather says we too often view sleep as an afterthought — until we find ourselves frozen in the middle of the night, our thoughts racing, fumbling for rest or relief. Some people might reach for a supplement or sleep aid.
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How Do We Know Ourselves? Part 1 of 3 With David Myers
Social psychologist David Myers joined APS’s Ludmila Nunes to speak about his career, his new book, and how we really do know ourselves.
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New Content From Perspectives on Psychological Science
A sample of articles on stress responses, Qualia, sex/gender differences in verbal fluency, seeing racism as a zero-sum game, why (and when) beliefs change, and much more.
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New Research in Psychological Science
A sample of research on positive psychological factors, the moral significance of aesthetics in nature imagery, attention, the status quo and its relationship to technology, and much more.
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Why Taking Gender Out of the Equation Is So Difficult
It turns out a rock can tell us a lot about gender. In a recent study, Ashley Martin, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, recruited more than 200 participants and gave each a rock. One group was asked to decorate its rocks as creatively as possible; the other was asked to anthropomorphize them with “uniquely human qualities.” (The participants were told that the rocks that received the highest ratings from a pair of judges would win $100.) People in both groups were more likely to ascribe gender to their rocks than other social categories such as race, age, or sexual orientation.
