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Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Social Media and PTSD, Preventing Procrastination
BBC: Claudia Hammond investigates Body dysmorphic disorder and asks if social media can really cause Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She also talks to the psychologist who explains why describing events in terms of the number of days away they are, rather than years could help prevent people procrastinating. Listen to the whole story: BBC
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Folk Explanations of Behavior: A Specialized Use of a Domain-General Mechanism Robert P. Spunt and Ralph Adolphs Do people use similar or different cognitive processes when making sense of social and nonsocial events? Participants' brain activity was measured while they completed a task in which they answered attributional and factual yes/no questions about the content of social images (emotional expressions and intentional hand actions) and nonsocial images (weather- and season-related).
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No Longer Wanting to Die
The New York Times: In January 2012, two weeks after my discharge from a psychiatric hospital in Connecticut, I made a plan to die. My week in an acute care unit that had me on a suicide watch had not diminished my pain. Back in New York, I stormed out of my therapist’s office and declared I wouldn’t return to the treatment I’d dutifully followed for three decades. Nothing was working, so what was the point? I fit the demographic profile of the American suicide — white, male and entering middle age with a history of depression. Suicide runs in families, research tells us, and it ran in mine. My father killed himself at age 49 in April 1990.
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Hiding Your True Colors May Make You Feel Morally Tainted
The advice, whether from Shakespeare or a modern self-help guru, is common: Be true to yourself. New research suggests that this drive for authenticity — living in accordance with our sense of self, emotions, and values — may be so fundamental that we actually feel immoral and impure when we violate our true sense of self. This sense of impurity, in turn, may lead us to engage in cleansing or charitable behaviors as a way of clearing our conscience. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Study finds there’s a surprising upside to certain kinds of failure
Business Insider: While no one likes to lose, new research suggests an upside to certain kinds of failure: When you get knocked down in one battle, you'll show up stronger in the next. According to the research from INSEAD, published in the journal Psychological Science, nearly winning can make you more motivated to seek another, unrelated reward. Read the whole story: Business Insider
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The Sad Cycle of Romantic Rejection
Pacific Standard: It's every average-looking man's dream. After being rejected by that handsome hunk, that beautiful woman you've been admiring from afar will realize her error in judgment and finally notice you. A lovely scenario, but newly published research suggests it's highly unlikely. In two studies, "rejection by an attractive man also led to derogation of, and distancing from, an unattractive man—even when that unattractive man offered acceptance," writes a research team led by University of Toronto psychologist Geoff MacDonald. Read the whole story: Pacific Standard
