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Girls Can’t Even Take the SAT Without Getting Stressed Out About Gender Stereotypes
New York Magazine: Ah, the bygone days of high school: long nights gossiping with friends, hanging out behind the supermarket, stress dreams over getting an SAT score that will get you into the college your parents want you to go to. Weren't they fun? While some of us wouldn't be caught dead taking the SAT again, a handful of professional SAT tutors sat down this year to get insight into how the test has changed. Believe it or not: they think parts of it are sexist. Read the whole story: New York Magazine
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A psychologist told me how she successfully navigated her way through a dilemma we’ve all faced
Business Insider: In May, when I spoke with the psychologist Gabriele Oettingen at the Psychological Science convention, she'd recently navigated her way out of a common dilemma. There she was at the convention, eager to discuss her own research and attend other psychologists' presentations. At the same time, she had a bunch of manuscripts to write and review. She couldn't possibly give her full attention to both the conference and the papers. She couldn't do two things at once. And so she WOOPed. That is, she engaged in a process of setting a goal and planning for ways to achieve it.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Heart Rate Variability Moderates the Association Between Separation-Related Psychological Distress and Blood Pressure Reactivity Over Time Kyle J. Bourassa, Karen Hasselmo, and David A. Sbarra Divorce-related stress has been shown to negatively influence later health outcomes. To examine the mechanisms underlying this relationship, researchers measured the respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA; a measure of changes in heart rate during the respiratory cycle) and blood pressure of recently divorced or separated adults while they performed a stressful math task and a divorce-related mental-activation task.
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Is Success in Our Genes?
Many factors influence the course of a person’s career, from a strong personal motivation to succeed to a leg up because of a family connection. One factor that psychological scientists are increasingly exploring is the extent to which our professional success is shaped by our genes. In a recent study, published in Psychological Science, a team of researchers led by Daniel W. Belsky of Duke University School of Medicine investigated the link between genetics and upward social mobility.
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‘Like’ it or not, teen brain is primed to join the crowd
The Washington Post: About the easiest action you can take in social media is to "like" a tweet or a photo. If you're a teenager, your brain is particularly primed to "like" what others have "liked," according to researchers from UCLA. Their new study, published in Psychological Science, is thought to be the first to replicate the social media experience while people are inside an fMRI scanner. The findings underscore the importance of both reward-seeking behavior and peer acceptance in adolescence. Read the whole story: The Washington Post
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CASUAL SEX: EVERYONE IS DOING IT
The New Yorker: Zhana Vrangalova had hit a problem. On a blustery day in early spring, sitting in a small coffee shop near the campus of New York University, where she is an adjunct professor of psychology, she was unable to load onto her laptop the Web site that we had met to discuss. This was not a technical malfunction on her end; rather, the site had been blocked. Vrangalova, who is thirty-four, with a dynamic face framed by thick-rimmed glasses, has spent the past decade researching human sexuality, and, in particular, the kinds of sexual encounters that occur outside the norms of committed relationships.
