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Survey: Your Biggest Regrets, and How to Make Them Work for You
TIME: Regret is as universal an emotion as love or fear, and it can be nearly as powerful. So, in a new paper, two researchers set about trying to figure out what the typical American regrets most. In telephone surveys, Neal Roese, a psychologist and professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and Mike Morrison, a doctoral candidate in psychology at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, asked 370 Americans, aged 19 to 103, to talk about their most notable regret. Participants were asked what the regret was, when it happened, whether it was a result of something they did or didn't do, and whether it was something that could still be fixed.
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On the Trail of the Orchid Child
Scientific papers tend to be loaded with statistics and jargon, so it’s always a delightful surprise to stumble on a nugget of poetry in an otherwise technical report. So it was with a 2005 paper in the journal Development and Psychopathology, drily titled “Biological sensitivity to context.” The authors of the research paper, human development specialists Bruce Ellis of the University of Arizona and W. Thomas Boyce of Berkeley, borrowed a bit of Swedish idiom to name a startling new concept in genetics and child development: orkidebarn.
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Genetic roots of ‘orchid’ children
Science News: A Swedish expression that translates as “orchid child” refers to a youngster who blossoms spectacularly if carefully nurtured but withers badly if neglected. Scientists have now identified gene variants that may help to cultivate orchid children by heightening their sensitivity to both good and bad parenting. In a group of kids tracked from ages 5 to 17, those who inherited certain forms of a gene involved in learning and memory and had inattentive parents displayed higher rates of delinquency and aggression than their peers, says a team led by psychologist Danielle Dick of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
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You choose, you lose
The Boston Globe: Beggars can’t be choosers, and, even worse for beggars, choosers don’t like beggars, according to a new study. People watched a six-minute video depicting a man engaging in a series of mundane activities in his apartment. Before watching the video, some people were told to note when the man made a choice; other people were told to note when the man touched an object. After watching the video while paying attention to choice, people were less supportive of affirmative action, banning harmful products, taxing fuel-inefficient cars, and requiring energy-saving insulation, and more supportive of legalizing marijuana and expanding adoption to unmarried parents.
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The Upside of College Rejection: Your Safety School Might Be the Smarter Choice
Time: The headlines last week weren't pretty. As colleges and universities nationwide revealed their admissions decisions, news broke of a dramatic decline in acceptance rates — and not just at Ivy League schools. The shift means that for the legions of high school students who sunk all their hopes and plans into a dream school find themselves grappling with some serious disappointment this week. Read the whole story: Time
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Cognitive and Motivation Style Differences Underlying Political Orientation
APS Fellow John Jost of New York University discusses cognitive and motivation style differences underlying political orientation. Just another example of how psychological science plays a role in our everyday lives, including politics. Want more information on this topic? Check out other research done by John Jost: Napier, J.L., & Jost, J.T. (2008). Why are conservatives happier than liberals? Psychological Science, 19, 565-572. Jost, J.T., Nosek, B.A. & Gosling, S.D. (2008). Ideology: Its resurgence in social, personality, and political psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3,126-136. Wakslak, C., Jost, J.T., Tyler, T.R., & Chen, E. (2007).
