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The Day Care Dilemma
Slate: In its cover story a few weeks ago, the New York Times Magazine followed up with nearly two dozen mothers who had decided, a decade ago, to walk away from successful professional careers to stay home with their kids. Although none of these moms outright regret their choices, many wish they had at least continued to work part-time. Career options dry up, it seems, the longer you forgo them. For me—the parenting columnist—the elephant in the room when I read the article was: So what was best for their kids? Parents often decide to stay home because they think doing so is better for their children.
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Children bullied in school may have more problems as adults
Chicago Tribune: Bullying doesn’t end in the school yard, but casts a shadow across adulthood, when victims are far more likely to have emotional, behavioral, financial and health problems, a new study suggests. Those who were both victim and perpetrator as schoolchildren fared the worst as adults: they were more than six times more likely to be diagnosed with a serious illness or psychiatric disorder, and to smoke regularly, according to the study published Monday in the journal Psychological Science. Read the whole story: Chicago Tribune
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Fans of Losing Teams Are Less Healthy
Discovery News: Find yourself heading to the fridge after your favorite NFL team suffers an overtime defeat to a rival? You’re not alone: Researchers found that fans in cities whose teams had lost games on Sunday ate 10 percent more calories the next day, including 16 percent more saturated fat. Fans in cities with a team that won actually ate less than usual: 5 percent fewer calories, and 9 percent less saturated fat, according to a study published in the journal Psychological Science. Read the whole story: Discovery News
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: One for All: Social Power Increases Self-Anchoring of Traits, Attitudes, and Emotions Jennifer R. Overbeck and Vitaliya Droutman The authors of this study hypothesized that powerful people are more likely than people with little power to engage in self-projection -- the projection of one's own traits, attitudes, and values onto group members. Participants were told they would be playing a group game and were assigned the role of group manager (high-power condition) or team member (low-power condition).
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The Dark Side of Empathy
Conventional wisdom, backed up by substantial experimental research, holds that we’re more cooperative in negotiations when we can truly see the other person’s point of view. But in some cases, seeing a situation from the other’s perspective can lead us into unethical behavior. A team of behavioral researchers suspected that in competitive contexts, perspective-taking draws our attention to conflicting interests and to how a competitor’s actions may threaten our own self-interest. They confirmed their hypothesis in a series of experiments, the results of which are reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Fast Forward Yourself
People who are able to sock away a healthy degree of resources for the future have essentially a relationship with their future selves, emerging research shows.
