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Understanding Mental Disorder through a Scientific Lens
A team of clinical scientists takes an in-depth look at three systems used for understanding mental-health disorders.
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Workers Pursuing a ‘Calling’ Face a Double-Edged Sword
While those with a calling may be more engaged in professional development, they show less flexibility and struggle to find a job that meets their ideals.
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Why sexual harassment training doesn’t stop harassment
Shannon Rawski first got the idea for her dissertation after listening to her former colleagues — business school professors who study human resources and recognize sexual harassment as a problem — complain about having to attend, well, sexual harassment training. “My university announced they needed to have it because they hadn’t in three years, and the buzz in the hallway was ‘Why do I have to go to this? This is a waste of my time,’ ” says Rawski, now an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh.
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Can Science Explain The Human Mind?
In The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce describes the mind as "a mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain," engaged in a futile attempt to understand itself "with nothing but itself to know itself with." Questions about the limits of self-understanding have persisted long after Bierce's 1911 publication. One user on Quora asks: "Is the human brain intelligent enough to fully understand itself?" A satirical headline at The Onion reports that psychology has come to a halt as "weary researchers say the mind cannot possibly study itself." ... Psychology PhD student Sara Gottlieb and I decided to find out.
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Tylenol May Help Ease The Pain Of Hurt Feelings
Nobody likes the feeling of being left out, and when it happens, we tend to describe these experiences with the same words we use to talk about the physical pain of, say, a toothache. "People say, 'Oh, that hurts,' " says Nathan DeWall, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky. DeWall and his colleagues were curious about the crossover between physical pain and emotional pain, so they began a series of experiments several years back. In one study, they found that acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) seemed to reduce the sting of rejection that people experienced after they were excluded from a virtual ball-tossing game.
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Science shows why it’s important to speak — not write — to people who disagree with you
There may be more to the phrase “the voice of reason” than meets the ear. When it comes to controversial ideas, a person's voice is more persuasive than the written word, according to a new study. In “The Humanizing Voice: Speech Can Reveal, and Text Conceal, The Presence of a Thoughtful Mind in The Midst of Disagreement” in a recent issue of Psychological Science, Juliana Schroeder of the University of California at Berkeley and faculty at the University of Chicago conducted several experiments exposing volunteers to ideas they agreed or disagreed with.
