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Toddlers Object When People Break the Rules
We all know that, for the most part, it’s wrong to kill other people, it’s inappropriate to wear jeans to bed, and we shouldn’t ignore people when they are talking to us. We know these things because we’re bonded to others through social norms – we tend to do things the same way people around us do them and, most importantly, the way in which they expect us to do them. Social norms act as the glue that helps to govern social institutions and hold humans societies together, but how do we acquire these norms in the first place?
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Mind vs. Body? Dualist Beliefs Linked with Less Concern for Healthy Behaviors
Many people, whether they know it or not, are philosophical dualists. That is, they believe that the brain and the mind are two separate entities. Despite the fact dualist beliefs are found in virtually all human cultures, surprisingly little is known about the impact of these beliefs on how we think and behave in everyday life. But a new research article forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that espousing a dualist philosophy can have important real-life consequences.
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Boosting New Memories With Wakeful Resting
Too often our memory starts acting like a particularly porous sieve: all the important fragments that should be caught and preserved somehow just disappear. So armed with pencils and bolstered by caffeine, legions of adults, especially older adults, tackle crossword puzzles, acrostics, Sudoku and a host of other activities designed to strengthen their flagging memory muscles. But maybe all they really need to do to cement new learning is to sit and close their eyes for a few minutes.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about new research published in Psychological Science examining the factors that influence early literacy. The Causal Role of Phoneme Awareness and Letter-Sound Knowledge in Learning to Read: Combining Intervention Studies With Mediation Analyses Charles Hulme, Claudine Bowyer-Crane, Julia M. Carroll, Fiona J. Duff, and Margaret J. Snowling Although researchers know that phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge are predictors of children's ability to learn to read, they are still unsure what the causal mechanism for this relationship is.
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Being in Awe Can Expand Time and Enhance Well-Being
It doesn't matter what we've experienced - whether it's the breathtaking scope of the Grand Canyon, the ethereal beauty of the Aurora Borealis, or the exhilarating view from the top of the Eiffel Tower - at some point in our lives we've all had the feeling of being in a complete and overwhelming sense of awe. Awe seems to be a universal emotion, but it has been largely neglected by scientists—until now. Psychological scientists Melanie Rudd and Jennifer Aaker of Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management devised a way to study this feeling of awe in the laboratory.
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Social Identification, Not Obedience, Might Motivate Unspeakable Acts
What makes soldiers abuse prisoners? How could Nazi officials condemn thousands of Jews to gas chamber deaths? What’s going on when underlings help cover up a financial swindle? For years, researchers have tried to identify the factors that drive people to commit cruel and brutal acts and perhaps no one has contributed more to this knowledge than psychological scientist Stanley Milgram. Just over 50 years ago, Milgram embarked on what were to become some of the most famous studies in psychology.