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Go Ahead, Ask For Help. People Are Happy to Give It.
Many things can get in the way of asking others for help: Fear of rejection. Fear of imposing. The pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mythology so ingrained in American culture. But new research suggests many of us underestimate how willing — even happy! — others are to lend a helping hand. The study, published in the journal Psychological Science this month, included six small experiments involving more than 2,000 participants — all designed to compare the perspectives of those asking for help with the perspectives of helpers.
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Attitudes Improve for Sex and Race. Disability and Age? Not So Much
How did attitudes about race, sexuality, age, or disability change in the last decade or so? Researchers examined more than 7 million implicit and explicit tests for an article published in Psychological Science. In this conversation, APS’s Ludmila Nunes speaks with APS member Tessa Charlesworth (Harvard University), the article’s lead author.
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New Content From Perspectives on Psychological Science
A sample of articles on effort, the origins of disease, control and attention, the predictive mind, digital parenting, psychopathology models, spatial representations, and more.
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New Content From Current Directions in Psychological Science
A sample of articles on conceptual clarification, language acquisition, insights from deep neural networks, how to reduce academic procrastination, improve learning, craving, and more.
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New Research in Psychological Science
A sample of research on racism, well-being in childhood and adult health, cultural differences in delayed gratification, problem solving in animals, and much more.
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Changing Perceptions About Harm Can Temper Moral Outrage
Comprehensive sex education works. Years of research show that it is much more effective than an abstinence-only approach at preventing teen pregnancy. In fact, abstinence-only programs may actually increase unplanned pregnancies and can contribute to harmful shaming and sexist attitudes. Yet abstinence, or “sexual risk avoidance,” programs persist in the U.S. Why? Ultimately many people believe that teenagers should not have sex. If adolescents just abstain, they reason, unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases will no longer be a problem.