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Psychologist Explains Why We Love Holiday, Feel-Good Movies
Dr. Pamela Rutledge, Director of the Media Psychology Research Center, discusses why people love predictable, feel-good holiday movies.
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Wikipedia Searches Reveal Differing Styles of Curiosity
The website Wikipedia describes curiosity as a “quality related to inquisitive thinking, such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident in humans and other animals.” But there is a lot more to this prime motivator for so much of human behavior—and Wikipedia, as the world’s largest encyclopedia, is now helping social scientists deepen the definition of curiosity. ... Princeton University psychologist Erik Nook praised the study’s “dazzlingly large” scope.
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Researchers Find New Ways to Support Children Impacted by War in Ukraine
Researchers are creating educational materials to support children who have been displaced or affected by the ongoing conflict. Visit Page
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Building Bridges: Exploring Cooperation in Children
Podcast: In this episode, we speak with Patricia Kanngiesser from the University of Plymouth about how children learn to navigate teamwork. Visit Page
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For Young Adults, Caregiving Isn’t Just Hard. It Can Shape You for Life
They're young and in love. But she's sick, and he's her caregiver, and that means nothing else comes easy. ... At this age, people typically explore new beliefs, relationships and friendships. It's when you become the author of your own life story, as psychologist Dan McAdams puts it. But when caregiving takes up all the bandwidth, school, work, social and other identities fade away. It's hard for anyone, but because young people's identities are still under development, they may be particularly prone to what psychologists call role engulfment: One facet of your life becomes the only thing you think about, the only self you recognize.
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We’ve Misunderstood Human Nature for 100 Years
One day in the summer of 1924, an anthropologist named Raymond Dart made an incredible discovery — and drew a conclusion from it about human nature that would mislead us for a century. Dart was examining a set of fossils that had been unearthed by miners near the town of Taung in South Africa when he found the skull of a “missing link” between ancient apes and humans. It belonged to a juvenile member of the species Australopithecus africanus who was later nicknamed the Taung Child.