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Being nice may be in your genes, according to study
CBS News: Being a nice person isn't just because of how your mother raised you: It might be coded into your genes. A new study, out in the April issue of Psychological Science, shows that people who have certain types of oxytocin and vasopressin receptor genes were more likely to be generous when coupled with that person's outlook on the world. Past research has shown that oxytocin and vasopressin promote more charitable behavior. Oxytocin has even been called the "love drug" or the "cuddle chemical" and has been known to create mothering behavior, according to Dr. Michel Poulin, professor of psychology at the University of Buffalo, who led the study.
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16th European Conference on Personality
APS-EAPP Cosponsored Preconference Symposium: “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Personality Dynamics” July 10, 2012 European Association of Personality Psychology 16th European Conference on Personality (ECP16) Trieste, Italy July 10-14, 2012
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Can You Think Your Way To That Hole-In-One?
NPR: Psychologists at Purdue University have come up with an interesting twist on the old notion of the power of positive thinking. Call it the power of positive perception: They've shown that you may be able to improve your golf game by believing the hole you're aiming for is larger than it really is. Jessica Witt, who studies how perception and performance are related, decided to look at golf — specifically, how the appearance of the hole changes depending on whether you're playing well or poorly. So she took a large poster board to a golf course with circles of different sizes drawn on it. Some circles matched the size of the golf hole, some were larger and some were smaller.
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Does power reveal people’s true colors?
Business Insider: Does power reveal people's true colors? Not necessarily. People with power do show their true colors when no other factors are affecting them. Overall it's more accurate to say that power makes people behave in line with whatever influences easily come to their mind -- whether that's their true desires, their habits or the context they're in. My guess is that the distinction here is that people without power have to consider whether their feelings are appropriate so as to not rock the boat. Powerful people don't need to filter, they just react to whatever is top of mind. Read the whole story: Business Insider
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Google searches for “Free Term Paper” expose cheating in income inequality states
KALW Public Radio: A new study published in the journal Psychological Science shows a correlation between college students that come from states with high income inequality and students that cheat. The researcher, Lukas Neville, is a Ph.D. candidate in organizational behavior at Queen’s School of Business in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He said he became interested in academic dishonesty and plagiarism because of his teaching experience. Turnstyle spoke with Neville about his research. Turnstyle: What inspired you to do this study? Neville:I wanted to look at situational factors that contributed to cheating.
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Unhappiness Is in the Eye of the Beholder
Science: A smile and a frown mean the same thing everywhere—or so say many anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists, who for more than a century have argued that all humans express basic emotions the same way. But a new study of people's perceptions of computer-generated faces suggests that facial expressions may not be universal and that our culture strongly shapes the way we read and express emotions. The hypothesis that facial expressions convey the same meaning the world over goes all the way back to Charles Darwin.
