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Staring contests automatic among the aggressive
USA Today: Staring contests, that staple of junior high school and bar fights, are indeed linked to dominance behavior and appear to be reflexive. Primates use staring contests instead of fights to resolve dominance issues. Humans do the same -- staring down another person establishes who's on top, socially, in a situation. Sometimes it keeps a fight from happening, sometimes it leads to a fight. Read the whole story: USA Today
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Study suggests link between stress hormone and PTSD in women
The Los Angeles Times: Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a lingering psychological response to a major traumatic event. And researchers studying the condition now have a clue about its development. Hint: Women and men are different. Their study, conducted in part at Emory University in Atlanta, was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Researchers tested 64 people who had experienced significant trauma in noncombat settings. In women but not men, they found a link between PTSD and high levels of a hormone called pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide produced in response to stress. Read the whole story: The Los Angeles Times
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Why Women Have BFFs
Live Science: When faced with the threat of being excluded from a group, women are likely to respond by excluding someone else, a new study indicates. Meanwhile, that threat made no difference to men playing the same competitive game. "It was striking — it was like a different world," said Joyce Benenson, the lead researcher, who is affiliated with Emmanuel College and Harvard University, referring to the difference. Benenson and her colleagues write the results indicate that women and men use different strategies when faced with a social threat. Read the whole story: Live Science
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People Who Think Their Partners Are a Perfect Fit Stay Happier—Even if They’re Wrong
Conventional wisdom says that if you idealize the person you marry, the disappointment is just going to be that much worse when you find out they aren’t perfect. But research challenges that assumption
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To Bet or Not to Bet, That Is the March Madness Question
With college basketball's Big Dance around the corner, a timely bit of science for you: A recent study in Psychological Science found that given a choice whether to gamble or not, we are not so good at forecasting our emotional reaction to the outcome. In a study, done by Eduardo B. Andrad of the University of California, Berkeley and Leaf Van Boven of University of Colorado at Boulder, volunteers were given the choice of gambling or not gambling underestimated the intensity of their affective reactions to the forgone gamble’s outcome. Those who would have been winners felt more displeasure than anticipated, and those who would have been losers felt more pleasure than anticipated.
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Emotions by the roomful
I have a friend who sucks the air out of the room whenever he comes around. He is so blustery and self-absorbed that people don’t interact with him; they capitulate. I also have friends who by their mere presence light up the room, raising the spirits of everyone gathered. I know people who cast a pall over the group and drag it down; others who have a calming effect on gatherings. These are all caricatures, of course. Nobody can sway the emotions of an entire room, energizing or subduing or infuriating every member of the group. After all, each of us has his or her own emotional make-up, which is surely more powerful than the mere presence of another person.
