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New Research From Psychological Science
Asymmetry in Resting Intracortical Activity as a Buffer to Social Threat Katrina Koslov, Wendy Barry Mendes, Petra E. Pajtas, and Diego A. Pizzagalli People respond to social rejection differently. To investigate whether differences in resting cortical brain activity could be responsible for different responses to social rejection, 84 women were asked to write a brief speech then read it in front of two other people. The individuals watching the speech would either frown and act like they hated the speech (threat condition) or provide positive feedback and encouragement (evaluation condition).
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The Rewards of Doing “Something”
People don't really care what they're doing — just as long as they are doing something. That's one of the findings summarized in a new review article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. When psychologists think about why people do what they do, they tend to look for specific goals, attitudes, and motivations. But they may be missing something more general - people like to be doing something. These broader goals, to be active or inactive, may have a big impact on how they spend their time.
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Alcohol, Mood and Me (Not You)
Thanks in part to studies that follow subjects for a long time, psychologists are learning more about differences between people. In a new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, the author describes how psychologists can use their data to learn about the different ways that people's minds work. Most psychology research is done by asking a big group of people the same questions at the same time.
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Taking Safety Personally
A year after the BP explosion and oil spill, those trying to find someone to blame are misguided, says psychological scientist E. Scott Geller, Alumni Distinguished professor at Virginia Tech, and author of a new paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Geller has spent much of his 42-year career developing interventions to keep people safe, particularly helping companies develop a culture that promotes occupational safety.
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Psychological Scientists Ask How Well—or Badly—We Remember Together
The social nature of memory has fast become a keen and enduring area of interest for cognitive scientists.
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Ostracism hurts—but how? Shedding light on a silent, invisible abuse
Humans need to belong. Yet they also commonly leave others out. Animals abandon the weakest to ensure the survival of the fittest. So do kindergartners and ’tweens, softball players and office workers. Common though they are, rejection and exclusion hurt. Endured for a long time, ostracism leaves people feeling depressed and worthless, resigned to loneliness or desperate for attention—in extreme cases, suicidal or homicidal. Yet ostracism “was essentially ignored by social scientists for 100 years,” says Purdue University psychologist Kipling D. Williams.
