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For Alcoholics, New Help in Abstaining—Without Thinking About It
Alcoholism is a tough addiction to kick. Eventually, most people return to drinking. But some Dutch and German psychological scientists have tested a short-term regime that promises to help alcoholics stay sober. Their study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association of Psychological Science. Heavy drinkers tend to behave impulsively in response to temptation. Meanwhile, their “reflective,” or controlled, responses—the thoughts that would help them resist drinking—are often weak. Most therapies, including Cognitive Behavior Therapy, primarily address the reflective responses.
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Full Bladder, Better Decisions? Controlling Your Bladder Decreases Impulsive Choices
What should you do when you really, REALLY have to “go”? Make important life decisions, maybe. Controlling your bladder makes you better at controlling yourself when making decisions about your future, too, according to a study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Sexual excitement, hunger, thirst—psychological scientists have found that activation of just one of these bodily desires can actually make people want other, seemingly unrelated, rewards more. Take, for example, a man who finds himself searching for a bag of potato chips after looking at sexy photos of women.
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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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Genes May Contribute to a Child’s Bad Behavior, but Only When Parents Are Distant
Is bad behavior determined by a child’s genes? A new study has found that a particular gene has some influence on whether or not adolescents show alarming behaviors—but only if their parents aren't keeping tabs on them. While this gene, which has been linked to alcoholism, has only a small effect on the risk of behavioral problems by itself, psychological scientists view this finding as an opportunity to understand how genetic risk combines with environmental factors to contribute to psychological outcomes and disorders.
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Staring Contests Are Automatic: People Lock Eyes to Establish Dominance
Imagine that you're in a bar and you accidentally knock over your neighbor's beer. He turns around and stares at you, looking for confrontation. Do you buy him a new drink, or do you try to outstare him to make him back off? New research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that the dominance behavior exhibited by staring someone down can be reflexive. Our primate relatives certainly get into dominance battles; they mostly resolve the dominance hierarchy not through fighting, but through staring contests. And humans are like that, too. David Terburg, Nicole Hooiveld, Henk Aarts, J.
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Making the ‘Irrelevant’ Relevant to Understand Memory and Aging
Age alters memory. But in what ways, and why? These questions comprise a vast puzzle for neurologists and psychologists. A new study looked at one puzzle piece: how older and younger adults encode and recall distracting, or irrelevant, information. The results, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association of Psychological Science, can help scientists better understand memory and aging. “Our world contains so much information; we don’t always know which is relevant and which is irrelevant,” said Nigel Gopie, who cowrote the study with Fergus I.M. Craik and Lynn Hasher, all from the University of Toronto’s Rotman Research Institute.
