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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Replicability and Robustness of Genome-Wide-Association Studies for Behavioral Traits Cornelius A. Rietveld, Dalton Conley, Nicholas Eriksson, Tonu Esko, Sarah E. Medland, Anna A. E. Vinkhuyzen, Jian Yang, Jason D. Boardman, Christopher F. Chabris, Christopher T. Dawes, Benjamin W. Domingue, David A. Hinds, Magnus Johannesson, Amy K. Kiefer, David Laibson, Patrik K. E. Magnusson, Joanna L. Mountain, Sven Oskarsson, Olga Rostapshova, Alexander Teumer, Joyce Y. Tung, Peter M. Visscher, Daniel J. Benjamin, David Cesarini, Philipp D.
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Hugs Help Protect Against Colds by Boosting Social Support
We're told to wash our hands, get plenty of rest, and avoid public coughers and sneezers in order to keep the common cold at bay, but new research suggests another line of defense: hugs. A team of researchers, led by Sheldon Cohen, the Robert E. Doherty University Professor of Psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, tested whether hugs act as a form of social support, protecting stressed people from getting sick. They found that greater social support and more frequent hugs protected people from the increased susceptibility to infection associated with being stressed and resulted in less severe illness symptoms.
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People Trust Typical-Looking Faces Most
Being “average” is often considered a bad thing, but research suggests that averageness wins when people assess the trustworthiness of a face.
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Political Extremists Are Less Susceptible to Common Cognitive Bias
People who occupy the extreme ends of the political spectrum may be less influenced by outside information on a simple estimation task than political moderates.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Do Men Overperceive Women's Sexual Interest? Carin Perilloux and Robert Kurzban Research has shown that men interpret women's levels of sexual interest as being higher than what women themselves report. In a series of surveys, women reported their sexual intentions, and men estimated the sexual intentions of women, on the basis of engagement in 15 different behaviors (e.g., cooked dinner, stared deeply into eyes, etc.). Men's estimations of women's sexual intentions were stronger than women's own ratings.
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Saving Old Information Can Boost Memory for New Information
The simple act of saving something, such as a computer file, may improve our memory for the information we encounter next.
