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Better Treatment for PTSD
What happens when fear — a psychological mechanism that protects us from harm — becomes unmanageable after a traumatic event? APS Fellow Edna Foa, one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in 2010, is an expert in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other anxiety disorders. She is known for designing “prolonged exposure” or PE, a groundbreaking therapy for PTSD that has been embraced by the US military. PE involves helping patients overcome their fears by gradually facing painful thoughts, memories, and environments. In this video excerpt from CMI Education Institute, Inc. Foa discusses treatment for PTSD.
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Why natural leaders are too self-obsessed to be good bosses
Daily Mail: Their swaggering arrogance and natural authority can make it seem like they were born to lead. But, though dominant individuals frequently make it to the top of the career ladder, their self-obsession often makes them the worst bosses, a study has shown. University of Amsterdam researchers divided 150 participants into groups of three. One in each was made leader and the other two were told they could advise, but that the leader would make the decision. The groups then had to choose the best candidate for a job. Read the whole story: The Daily Mail
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Exercise Is Good for Your Waistline – But It’s a Writing Exercise
Is losing weight as simple as doing a 15-minute writing exercise? In a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, women who wrote about their most important values, like close relationships, music, or religion, lost more weight over the next few months than women who did not have that experience. “We have this need to feel self-integrity,” says Christine Logel of Renison University College at the University of Waterloo, who cowrote the new study with Geoffrey L. Cohen of Stanford University.
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Nigel Gopie
Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest www.nigelgopie.com What does your research focus on? How does memory facilitate our communication? Memory underlies our ability to retrieve the name of a colleague or to remember what we said to a friend a week ago so we do not repeat a joke or information. My research focuses on how memory facilitates these socially important tasks. What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you? Forgetting the names of familiar people and prefacing conversations with, “Have I told you this before?” is not just prevalent among older adults but it is also a common problem among people in my generation.
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Andrew Butler
Duke University, USA http://duke.edu/~ab259/index.html What does your research focus on? Generally speaking, I study human memory and learning. However, I am particularly interested in how the act of retrieving information from memory affects subsequent memory for that information. Many people consider memory retrieval to be a neutral event, much like measuring someone’s weight. Just as stepping on a scale doesn’t change how much someone weighs, memory retrieval is assumed to reveal the contents of memory but leave them unchanged. However, a large body of research has shown that retrieving information from memory actually changes memory.
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Hanna Zagefka
Royal Holloway University of London, UK What does your research focus on? My research focuses on intergroup relations, particularly acculturation and other phenomena affecting ethnic minorities. More recently, I have started to investigate predictors of charitable donations, a line of work I am currently very excited about. I approach this topic from an intergroup perspective — how do group memberships increase or reduce prosociality towards those in need? What drew you to this line of research? Why is it exciting to you?
