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Bandura and Bobo
In 1961, children in APS Fellow Albert Bandura’s laboratory witnessed an adult beating up an inflatable clown. The doll, called Bobo, was the opposite of menacing with its wide, ecstatic grin and goofy clown outfit. But when it was their own turn to play with Bobo, children who witnessed an adult pummeling the doll were likely to show aggression too. Similar to their adult models, the children kicked the doll, hit it with a mallet, and threw it in the air. They even came up with new ways to hurt Bobo, such as throwing darts or aiming a toy gun at him. Children who were exposed to a non-aggressive adult or no model at all had far less aggression toward Bobo.
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Advice urges wider sharing of heart care decisions
USA Today: A heart device might save your life but leave you miserable. That awful possibility is the reason for new advice urging doctors to talk more honestly with people who have very weak hearts and are considering pumps, pacemakers, new valves or procedures to open clogged arteries. Too often, patients with advanced heart failure don't realize what they are getting into when they agree to a treatment, and doctors assume they want everything possible done to keep them alive, says the new advice, published Monday by the American Heart Association and endorsed by other medical groups.
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Facebook and Smartphones: New Tools for Psychological Science Research—News Brief
WASHINGTON -- Whether you’re an iPerson who can’t live without a Mac, a Facebook addict, or a gamer, you know that social media and technology say things about your personality and thought processes. And psychological scientists know it too – they’ve started researching how new media and devices both reveal and change our mental states. Two recent articles in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science, explored how trends in technology are changing the questions psychological scientists are asking and the ways they ask them.
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Science Is International at the APS Annual Convention
Disaster, Response, and Recovery featuring Silvia H. Koller (Rio Grande do Sul Federal University, Brazil) and Dirk Helbing (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich) Biological Beings in Social Context featuring Annette Karmiloff-Smith (Birkbeck, University of London, United Kingdom) Music, Mind, and Brain featuring Daniel J. Levitin (McGill University, Canada) and a special concert with five-time Grammy Award Winner Victor Wooten The Psychology of Misinformation Chairs: Ullrich K.H.
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Parents Are Happier People
Contrary to recent scholarship and popular belief, parents experience greater levels of happiness and meaning in life than people without children, according to researchers from the University of California, Riverside, the University of British Columbia and Stanford University. Parents also are happier during the day when they are caring for their children than during their other daily activities, the researchers found in a series of studies conducted in the United States and Canada. These findings will be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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A Divine Way to Resist Temptation
The Wall Street Journal: I was raised in a kosher household. Though I never fully understood why I couldn't eat cheeseburgers or pepperoni pizza—the theology still confuses me—I quickly learned to follow the rules. At birthday parties, I always informed the hosts that I preferred my pizza plain. If they forgot, I would just eat the crust. What's odd about such self-restraint is that I was terrible at holding back my childish desires in almost every other way. Even as I skipped the pepperoni, I would often gorge myself on cake. I could deny myself lobster, but I would throw massive tantrums if I didn't get my box of Milk Duds at the movies.
