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‘Indelible in the Hippocampus Is the Laughter.’ The Science Behind Christine Blasey Ford’s Testimony
Christine Blasey Ford drew heavily on her psychology background while giving an emotional testimony about her alleged sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, discussing everything from brain chemistry to risk factors for anxiety. --- Experts say that during trauma, the brain does select for salient details. Research indeed shows that norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter released in response to stress or emotional arousal, allows the brain to zero in on certain things and tune out others, says Charan Ranganath, director of the Memory and Plasticity Program at the University of California at Davis.
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Harvard and Cornell researchers find that people like you more than you think
If you're hard on yourself about how you come off in social situations, especially when it comes to making first impressions, you're not alone. But there's good news. A recent study published in the Association for Psychological Science suggests that the people you meet probably like you more than you think. "Our research suggests that accurately estimating how much a new conversation partner likes us — even though this a fundamental part of social life and something we have ample practice with — is a much more difficult task than we imagine," say co-authors Erica Boothby, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University, and Gus Cooney, a social psychologist at Harvard University.
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‘Man Up’: How A Fear Of Appearing Feminine Restricts Men, And Affects Us All
What comes to mind when you imagine a "girly" drink? Is it pink and fruity? Does it have lots of whipped cream? A tiny umbrella? If you're a man reading this, you might hesitate to order such a drink. Psychologist Jennifer Bosson studies gender, and once conducted a study with about 200 men and women. She asked them to write about a time when they violated gender norms. Some of the women talked about being called a tomboy. Others mentioned times when they worked in male-dominated fields and were made to feel uncomfortable by coworkers. But men?
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How Trauma Affects Memory: Scientists Weigh In On The Kavanaugh Hearing
In Thursday's testimony at Judge Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings, Christine Blasey Ford alleged Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party in 1982, when she was 15 years old and he was 17. Kavanaugh staunchly denied these allegations. But memory is fallible. A question on many people's minds is, how well can anyone recall something that happened over 35 years ago? Pretty well, say scientists, if the memory is of a traumatic event. That's because of the key role emotions play in making and storing memories.
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MacArthur ‘genius’ grant winners ponder a new future: ‘Your life can change in an instant.’
Kristina Olson has always been fascinated by questions of gender. As a psychologist, she’d studied how children behaved in social groups, and five years ago, she decided she wanted to know more about transgender children who were living as their self-identified gender. “At least initially, transgender kids feel they are a part of a gender group that the whole world doesn’t believe they’re in, and that’s a really unique experience, and I wanted to understand what that experience was like,” said Olson, 37, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Washington and the director of the Social Cognitive Development Lab there.
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Are You a Visual or an Auditory Learner? It Doesn’t Matter
You must read this article to understand it, but many people feel reading is not how they learn best. They would rather listen to an explanation or view a diagram. Researchers have formalized those intuitions into theories of learning styles. These theories are influential enough that many states (including New York) require future teachers to know them and to know how they might be used in the classroom. But there’s no good scientific evidence that learning styles actually exist. Over the last several decades, researchers have proposed dozens of theories, each suggesting a scheme to categorize learners.
