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Helmet or No Helmet? It Depends Which Side of the Atlantic You’re On
The Wall Street Journal: I learned to ride my bicycle at the edge of a small German village. My parents fastened a set of training wheels to it, strapped a helmet onto my head, and gave me a gentle push down the road. With practice, the training wheels came off, and the helmet disappeared at some point during high school. It seemed like a natural progression in which “going helmet-free” was merely one of the rites that mark the gradual transition toward adolescence: the first drink, the first kiss, the first unprotected bike ride—although not necessarily in that order.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: Self-Distancing From Trauma Memories Reduces Physiological but Not Subjective Emotional Reactivity Among Veterans With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Blair E. Wisco, Brian P. Marx, Denise M. Sloan, Kaitlyn R. Gorman, Andrea L. Kulish, and Suzanne L. Pineles Self-distancing (i.e., taking a third-person perspective) has been shown to reduce emotional and physiological reactivity during self-reflection. In this study, veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were instructed to recount and analyze their worst traumatic event from either a first-person or a third-person perspective.
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Distraction Is Good for Learning, Sometimes
Scientific American: Distraction can be a good thing for learning under the right circumstances—namely when you will be tested or have to perform under similarly distracting contexts. Those distracted during just one phase performed poorly when tested, but those who had done the letter-counting task during both training and testing performed just as well as those who had trained and been tested without distractions, according to the results published in February in Psychological Science. Read the whole story: Scientific American
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Here’s the Best Time to Schedule Your Next Job Interview
TIME: Early in the morning. You want to be the first interview. Two reasons why: 1) Research shows college admissions interviewers who have said yes to many applicants in one day are less likely to approve another that day, despite the arbitrary distinction. Most people use similar informal groupings in their head for comparisons. Best to be first and not be on the losing end of such considerations. Read the whole story: TIME
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Headed to the grocery store? Try this one trick to avoid temptation
TODAY: Grocery shopping on an empty stomach can be a big mistake - you may end up with a cart full of cookies, chips and ice cream. But there's an easy solution — eating an apple before grocery shopping encourages people to buy healthier foods, a recent study finds. "Just having a small health snack before shopping can help you steer people toward healthier choices," writes Aner Tal, a research associate at the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, via email. Read the whole story: TODAY
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Hot Sauce Is Main Course at New York Showcase
The New York Times: NEW YORK — New Zealand chef-turned-entrepreneur Chris Cullen seems to have hot sauce running in his veins, judging from the passionate way he speaks about one of America's hottest food trends. "I had a love of food and all things hot and spicy ever since I can remember," says Cullen, one of 50 or so vendors offering their interpretations of the spicy condiment at this weekend's New York City Hot Sauce Expo in Brooklyn. ...
