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Why using a mobile phone can be contagious
The Telegraph: Researchers concluded that a person was twice as likely to talk on a mobile, or check for messages, if a companion did the same. The University of Michigan study discovered that checking a phone created an “alternative outlet” for a person's attention. It also found that females were more likely to use their mobile than men because it was more “integrated into the daily lives of women”. Scientists suggested the study’s findings, published in the Human Ethology Bulletin journal, could be linked to “social exclusion”, in which a human feels the need not be left feeling “out of the loop”.
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Poker Players’ Arms Give Away Their Hands
Scientific American: A good “poker face” can hide the quality of your cards. But your arms might still be giving away your hands. That’s the finding of a study to come out in the journal Psychological Science. [Michael L. Slepian et al., Quality of Professional Players’ Poker Hands is Perceived Accurately from Arm Motions] Volunteers watched videos of the World Series of Poker. The videos were edited so the subjects saw one of three different views of the players: the poker players’ entire bodies from the table up, or just the players’ faces or just the players’ arms pushing chips into the pot. Read the whole story: Scientific American
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A Cognitive Earthquake: Who’s Really In Need?
In January 2000, an earthquake shook China’s mountainous Yunnan province. It was a moderate earthquake and killed only seven, but it leveled more than 40,000 homes and injured thousands of residents. According to the World Health Organization, as many as 1.8 million were affected by the disaster, and in need of shelter, medical attention or other aid. A couple years later, an earthquake hit the Iranian city of Bam, a tourist center once famous as a Silk Road trading post. This disaster took the lives of almost 27,000 and affected another 270,000. Every natural disaster, whatever the WHO tallies, is tragic for somebody, and the world’s citizens always respond in humanitarian ways.
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Can Tylenol Dissolve Feelings of Dread?
TIME: Thinking about death, fearing the unknown and worrying about the future aren’t traditionally considered sources of physical pain, but they may be susceptible to the same pain-killing treatments. So Daniel Randles, a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia and his colleagues decided to see if the interaction ran deeper. Perhaps, they thought, the pain-processing region in the brain reacts to many types of unexpected, potentially negative events. After all, both pain and social rejection involve unpredictable and distressing events that could lead to behavioral changes to avoid those situations in the future. Uncertainty also tends to increase both types of pain.
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Encountering Connections May Make Life Feel More Meaningful
Experiencing connections, regularities, and coherence in their environment may lead people to feel a greater sense of meaning in life, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research, conducted by graduate student Samantha Heintzelman of the University of Missouri, along with advisor Laura King and fellow graduate student Jason Trent, suggests that meaning in life has an important adaptive function, connecting people to the world that surrounds them and, thereby, boosting their chances of survival. “Meaning in life tells the individual when the world is making sense,” say Heintzelman and colleagues.
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Shhh, The Kids Can Hear You Arguing (Even When They’re Asleep)
NPR: For years now, psychologists have been telling couples who yell at one another to stop for the sake of the kids. Such conflict in the home — even when no violence is involved — is associated with a host of negative behavioral and life outcomes for children. Some strands of research have gone so far as to suggest that dissolving a marriage might be better for kids than exposing them to high levels of conflict within a bad marriage. Still, the effects of parental conflict do not appear to be experienced equally by all children. Some kids do badly when exposed to conflict; others seem to cope much better.
