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People rebel when they feel there is a way out
The Economic Times: People stuck with a rule are more likely to tolerate it than people who think the rule isn't definite. And this could explain many things, from unrequited love to the uprisings in the Arab world. When people were living under dictatorships in the Arab world with power that appeared to be absolute, they may have been comfortable with it, said Kristin Laurin of the University of Waterloo who led the study, the journal Psychological Science reports.
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Mothers buy into freeze-frame parenting
Los Angeles Times: Instructed to play with my baby, Max, for 20 minutes while he sat in an infant seat, no toys allowed, I pulled out every trick in the book. Sign language ABCs. An animated version of "Itsy Bitsy Spider." All the time, a camera was trained on my face, another on his. I returned a few weeks later to see the results: Aimee Wheeler, a therapist, had synched up the footage into one split-screen video and analyzed all the tiny interactions between us, frame by frame by frame. "Great narrative. Jenny gives Max space to acclimate to the room," says one page of Wheeler's notes. "Jenny's contact turns into a gentle invitation for play with stroking of feet," says another.
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Sports Fans Remember Victories Better Than Defeats: Study
U.S. News & World Report: You're more likely to remember the games that your favorite teams win rather than the ones they lose, a new study says. It included almost 1,600 baseball fans who followed or attended the 2003 and 2004 American League Championship baseball games between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. When questioned years later, fans of both teams remembered more details about their teams' wins than their losses, including the location of the games, winning and losing pitchers and whether the games went extra innings. The study is published in the October issue of the journal Psychological Science.
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Psychologists Stress the Importance of Memory in Preventing Relapse after Therapy
Addictions, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder—such painful and harmful problems are recalcitrant to treatment. In the clinic, a person may suppress the association between the stimulus and the response—say, a bar with ashtrays and smoking—by learning to pair the stimulus with a new memory not involving smoking. But once out in the world, faced with bars and ashtrays aplenty, he relapses into the old behavior. Some treatment aims at helping the patient avoid locations and stimuli that trigger the harmful behavior. A new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, says this is not the most effective route.
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Why Mindfulness Meditation Makes Us Healthier
Huffington Post: Previous research on mindfulness meditation has shown that it aids in lowering blood pressure, improves immune system and brain function and minimizes pain sensitivity. A new review of past literature on mindfulness now breaks down what exactly it is about the practice that seems to have these beneficial effects. Researchers defined mindfulness as "the nonjudgmental awareness of experiences in the present moment" in the Perspectives on Psychological Science study. They identified the four acting components of mindfulness meditation: regulation of attention, body awareness, self-awareness and regulation of emotion.
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It’s true: Women ARE worse with technology – but only because they’re not interested
Daily Mail: Why do females score worse in technology tests at school? Researchers have been puzzled by the fact that males score better on technical tests - but do no better in the workplace. Researchers at the University of Iowa found that the difference in performance in technical tests wasn't related to intelligence - and it had no impact on job performance. Young women simply aren't interested in the tests, but can adapt to the same skills if required for a job. Read the full story: Daily Mail
