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Reminders of Death Can Sway Political Attitudes
From one day to the next, approval ratings of political figures can plummet or soar. Psychological scientists have long been trying to identify the cognitive factors that might account for the vagaries of public opinion. Why, for example, did the approval ratings of President George W. Bush— who was perceived as indecisive before September 11, 2001—soar over 90 percent after the terrorist attacks? Research suggests that it was because Americans were acutely aware of their own deaths. The fear people felt after 9/11 was real, but it also made them ripe for psychological manipulation, experts say.
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Cleanliness Is Next to…Conservatism?
In every election cycle, politicians on both sides of the aisle are accused of practicing ‘dirty politics.’ Neither side is immune from these charges but research from psychological science suggests that we may subconsciously associate our notions of ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ with specific political ideologies. In a research article published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers Erik Helzer and David Pizarro of Cornell University found that people who are reminded of physical purity report being more politically conservative and make harsher moral judgments regarding sexual behavior.
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Who’s Honoring Me Now?
The Colbert Report: Scientists from Canada and New Zealand research a little world-changing concept Stephen tossed off on his first show in 2005. Watch here: The Colbert Report
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The Lemon of Illness and the Demand for Lemonade
The Open Mind: I’m Richard Heffner, your host on The Open Mind. And it’s been a number of years since I first joined at this table in a no-holds-barred conversation with Dr. Jessie Gruman, the founder of the Center for Advancing Health, a non-profit institute designed to translate health research into effective public policy and private practice. I titled our first programs together “Rx for Health Policy and Practice”.
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Why old people are more happy: They have learnt to avert their eyes from things likely to bring them down
The Daily Mail: Older people are happier than younger adults because, simply, they avert their eyes from things that are likely to make them upset, research shows. The finding explains research that has shown that older adults display more positive emotions and are quicker to regulate out of negative emotional states than younger adults. Given the declines in cognitive functioning and physical health that tend to come with age, we might expect that age would be associated with worse moods, not better ones. Read the whole story: The Daily Mail
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Looking for Trouble (and Seeing It)
The Huffington Post: I've known a few troublemakers over the years. These were guys with huge chips on both shoulders, who would gladly pick a fight if you looked at them wrong. And looking at them wrong could really mean doing nothing provocative at all, because they saw signs of hostility and threat where others did not, especially in others' faces. They were literally looking for trouble. Scientists and clinicians are interested in the dynamic interaction of perception and aggression. Looking for trouble, and seeing it, may be a deep cognitive bias--a negativity bias--that distorts normal emotional processing.
