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How Social Media After the Boston Bombing Can Be a Recipe for PTSD
The Atlantic: Monday's horrific events at the Boston Marathon produced horrific images which in the age of social media news means an inescapable constant, unsolicited bombardment of the gruesome aftermath of a gruesome event. While Twitter offered the fastest, most up-to-date, and accurate information, it also served as an unfiltered chronicle of the most distressing imagery, which can have lasting mental and physical effects. "It's hard to know what might be the news value in any of this," Roxane Cohen Silver, a UC Irvine professor, told The Atlantic Wire.
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Cooperation after a tragedy: When our hearts know better than our minds.
Scientific American: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.” – Fred Rogers The exact details of what happened today on Boylston Street are still being sorted out, but multiple reports are confirming that two bombs were detonated close to the finish line of today’s Boston Marathon, killing at least two people and wounding dozens of others.
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The Two Faces of Attractiveness
Imagine that you’re an early human, trying to make your way in a perilous world. One very useful talent would be reading and reacting to the faces of other early humans—rapidly categorizing them into good and safe, on the one hand, or bad and threatening on the other. This skill would come in handy for everything from selecting mates to identifying friends and enemies. But how do we make these quick judgments? Well, the most obvious rule-of-thumb might be something like this: Is this face familiar or strange? Familiar faces are easy to process and categorize—as a brother or neighbor or member of the tribe.
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People Present Themselves in Ways That Counteract Prejudices Toward Their Group
Individuals from stigmatized groups choose to present themselves in ways that counteract the specific stereotypes and prejudices associated with their group, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “People often think of prejudice as a simple, single phenomenon — general dislike for members of other groups — but recent research suggests that there are actually multiple, distinct types of prejudice,” says graduate student Rebecca Neel, who conducted the research with her advisor Steven Neuberg and post-doctoral scholar Samantha Neufeld at Arizona State University.
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Experiencing Existential Dread? Tylenol May Do the Trick
Thinking about death can cause us to feel a sort of existential angst that isn’t attributable to a specific source. Now, new research suggests that acetaminophen, an over-the-counter pain medication, may help to reduce this existential pain. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Q&A With Morton Ann Gernsbacher
APS Past President Morton Ann Gernsbacher is a Vilas Research Professor and the Sir Frederic C. Bartlett Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Gernsbacher is a leader in the field of cognitive psychology. Her research focuses on the cognitive roots of language comprehension. For more information about Gernsbacher and her research, visit www.GernsbacherLab.org. The DSM-5 officially comes out in May. Do you have any insights about what’s going to happen with diagnoses for conditions like autism? This is an important question, and one that many researchers, clinicians, and persons currently with and without diagnoses, are speculating about.
