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The Psychological Science Behind an Oops Moment
Over the last week or so, the phrase “brain freeze” has taken on a new meaning and caused a bit of media frenzy – first over Rick Perry’s debate flub on television, followed immediately by Herman Cain’s floundering on a question. A moment like this can happen to the best of us, whether it is captured live on national television or in private. The media has focused extensively on these two politicians and their momentary lapses in memory, but perhaps it is time to examine the psychological science of these kinds of brain-freeze moments and why they occur.
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Mom-to-be's mental state may affect child's development
USA Today: A fetus is sensitive to, and can be affected by, the expectant mother's mental state, a new study suggests. University of California, Irvine, researchers recruited pregnant women and tested them for depression before and after they gave birth. The women's babies were tested after birth to assess how well they were developing. Consistency in the mother's mental state appeared to be important to a baby's well-being. Development was best in babies with mothers who were either depression-free or had depression before and after giving birth.
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Anti-Thanksgiving? Complaining can be a good thing
msnbc: If Thanksgiving weekend is a time for gratitude, let's make the weekend before the holiday a time for whining. Actually, two studies out this week explore the upside of negative thinking. Sometimes, believing that everything's the worst can ultimately be for the best, the research suggests. Fun fact 1: Complaining can help inspire people to change a bad situation. “In order to actually change the system, you’ve got to know what’s wrong with it,” says India Johnson, a graduate student at Ohio State University who helped lead a study set to appear in the journal Psychological Science.
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Lost in the Shopping Center
You go to the mall to buy one pair of jeans and leave with your jeans plus new shoes, a pretzel, and a couple of magazines. Sound familiar? Watch Marc Fennell of Hungry Beast explain how store design can encourage impulse buying — and why Ikea shoppers in particular tend to overbuy. According to Alan Penn of University College London, Ikea really is designed like a maze. You can read more about Penn’s research from Daily Mail and the Telegraph. If you’re looking for tips on orienting yourself and escaping from maze-like buildings, Laura A.
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Bipolar Kids May Focus on Different Facial Features
U.S. News & World Report: Children with bipolar disorder and a similar condition called severe mood dysregulation spend less time looking at the eyes when trying to identify facial features, compared to children without the psychiatric disorders, researchers say. This new study finding may help explain why children with bipolar disorder and severe mood dysregulation have difficulty determining other people's emotional expressions, said the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health investigators. The researchers tracked the eye movements of children with and without psychiatric disorders as they viewed faces with different emotional expressions, such as happy, sad, fearful and angry.
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Viktor Frankl: Why to believe in others
The highly regarded psychiatrist Viktor Frankl formulated many of his revolutionary ideas while incarcerated in a concentration camp. In this illuminating lecture, he adroitly summarizes his main points regarding humanity's never-ending quest for an overarching meaning of life. He argues that overestimation and idealism nurtures the best in people, likening the phenomenon to landing an aircraft. -MasterDegree.net Watch the TED Talk here
