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How You Treat Others May Depend on Whether You’re Single or Attached
With Valentine’s Day looming, many married couples will wish marital bliss for their single friends. At the same time, many singles will pity their coupled friends’ loss of freedom. People like to believe that their way of life -- whether single or coupled -- is the best for everyone, especially if they think their relationship status is unlikely to change, according to a study forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study suggests that this bias may influence how we treat others, even in situations where relationship status shouldn’t matter.
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Research Explores How Our Relationships Can Impact Our Health
New reports published by the Association for Psychological Science take a closer look at physiological and genetic factors that may help to explain the influence that our relationships can have on our physical health. Does Attachment Get Under the Skin? Adult Romantic Attachment and Cortisol Responses to Stress Paula R. Pietromonaco, Casey J. DeBuse, and Sally I. Powers Our adult relationships can affect our overall health in the long-term, but they can also influence how we respond to specific stressors in the short-term.
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New Insights From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research and boundary-crossing insights published in Clinical Psychological Science. Suppression-Induced Reduction in the Specificity of Autobiographical Memories Elizabeth Stephens, Amy Braid, and Paula T. Hertel Although research has shown that repeated suppression of memories can lead people to forget them -- something that may be adaptive -- the effect of suppression on autobiographical memories is not well understood. Dysphoric and nondysphoric participants were asked to recall autobiographical memories in response to negative, positive, and neutral cue words and to create a title for each memory.
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Happiness Increases with Age, Across Generations
Longitudinal research reveals that self-reported feelings of well-being tend to increase with age, but that a person’s overall level of well-being depends on when he or she was born.
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21 Minutes to Marital Satisfaction
Marital satisfaction generally declines over time, but a brief writing intervention that helps spouses adopt a more objective outlook on marital conflict could help prevent couples from losing that loving feeling.
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Shame About Past Alcoholism Predicts Relapse and Declining Health in Recovering Alcoholics
Feeling shame about past instances of problem drinking may increase the likelihood of relapse and other health problems, according to a new study in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study, conducted by researchers from the University of British Columbia, shows that behavioral displays of shame strongly predicted whether recovering alcoholics would relapse in the future. Public shaming has long been viewed as a way to encourage people to amend their ways and research suggests that experiences of shame can motivate people to improve their self-image and contribute to a common good.
