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When Should You Avoid Dealing With Emotions?
Huffington Post: One of the cornerstones of alcoholism recovery is what's called "emotional sobriety." The idea is that alcoholics and other addicts, if they hope to stay sober over the long haul, must learn to regulate the negative feelings that can lead to discomfort, craving and -- ultimately -- relapse. It's a lifelong project, a whole new way of thinking about life's travails. But the recovery literature also says "first things first" -- which simply means, "don't drink." Especially in the early days of recovery, alcoholics are counseled not to analyze why they are addicted, or how they might have avoided alcoholism: "Don't think and don't drink" is the maxim.
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Study: Nurturing mother plays role in future health
Chicago Sun-Times: Poor children are more likely to become unhealthy adults — vulnerable to infection and disease — than kids from higher-income families, according to a new study. However, the study findings revealed, some disadvantaged children grow up into healthy adults. Their secret: a nurturing and attentive mother. Upward mobility also has been cited as a reason that children from low-income families become healthy adults, the study pointed out. Yet the researchers found that income in adulthood didn’t offset childhood poverty.
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Virginia Tech announces national addiction registry
Virginia Tech News: ROANOKE, Va., Oct. 6, 2011 – C.W. started getting high when he was only 13. "I started off sniffing gasoline out of a lawnmower, then moved on to beer, wine, and marijuana," he said. Soon he was snorting cocaine, taking speed, and basing major life decisions — dropping out of high school, leaving the military, quitting a stable job, even abandoning his family — on his need to get high. He eventually found himself dodging drug dealers who were threatening to kill him over his mounting debt. It was a near-fatal accident that ended up saving C.W.'s life.
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<em>Psychological Science</em> Authors Honored With Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine
Watching Nobel laureates dancing the sirtaki and witnessing a flight of 1,200 paper airplanes were two of the unconventional events used to honor the winners of the 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes. Among the winners were Mirjam Tuk, Debra Trampe, and Luk Warlop, who received this year’s Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine for research demonstrating that people with full bladders make less impulsive choices. Their work was published earlier this year in Psychological Science. At first, Tuk wasn’t sure what to make of the prize. “I was curious to what extent this reward only highlights hilarious research [as opposed to] serious research, which mine was in the end.
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Practical Wisdom
Everywhere we turn these days, we are confronted with a dizzying array of choices, whether we’re shopping at the supermarket or searching for a first home. Barry Schwartz’s research investigates the decision-making processes that underlie our choices and examines how our choices make us feel. Schwartz’s research has shown that, rather than making us feel better, having more freedom and choice often makes us feel worse. Specifically, the expectation of choice may cause us to question our choices before we make them and can lead us to be disappointed with them afterward.
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Giving Science Its Due
One of the early advocates of using quantitative methods in psychology, James McKeen Cattell studied under William Wundt, the “father” of experimental psychology, in Germany. Cattell, the first professor of psychology in the United States, was interested in the quantitative measurement of intelligence. His goals led him to pursue classic studies looking at differences between individuals’ reaction times during simple mental tasks, such as naming colors.
