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How do you get rid of that phobia? Watch someone else doing the very thing you’re terrified of
The Daily Mail: Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden claim that dealing with it in this way could be more effective than facing your fears through personal experience. ‘Information about what is dangerous and safe in our environment is often transferred from other individuals through social forms of learning,’ said lead author Armita Golkar. ‘Our findings suggest that these social means of learning promote superior down-regulation of learned fear, as compared to the sole experiences of personal safety.’ Previous research has shown that other fears held by people in your social group could contribute to your own phobias.
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Forget the poker face, players need poker arms, study suggests
The Telegraph: Keeping your cards close with an emotionless expression has been thought so successful for years that it has become a common term for tricks used to get ahead in life. But a new study of the game has found that hand and arm movements when placing chips can betray the value of the cards a player is holding, even when they have the straightest face, the Independent reported. Those who are confident that they could have a winning hand place their bets with a smoother arm that those who are trying to blag using poor cards, and observers can guess in just two seconds.
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Conquer Phobias By Watching Someone Else Interact With What You’re Afraid Of: Study
The Huffington Post: Are you afraid of spiders? A good way to get over that fear might be to watch another person interact with a spider, and experience no harm from doing so. A new study suggests an effective way to conquer your fears could be to see someone else safely interact with the thing you're afraid of -- something called "vicarious social learning." "Information about what is dangerous and safe in our environment is often transferred from other individuals through social forms of learning," study researcher Armita Golkar, of the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, said in a statement.
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Time to Write? Go Outside
The New York Times: Fall promises crisp days with ample sunlight, a lifting of the humidity and ideal temperatures for being outdoors. This also means my writing will be getting better. Nothing coaxes jumbled thoughts into coherent sentences like sitting under a shade tree on a pleasant day. With a slight breeze blowing, birds chirping melodies, wee bugs scurrying around me and a fully charged laptop or yellow legal pad at hand, I know I’ll produce my best work. I stumbled upon my ideal writing conditions quite by accident.
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You Call That Aggressive? Not Compared to ‘Grand Theft Auto’!
Pacific Standard: Early Tuesday morning, a Londoner bought one of the first available copies of the highly anticipated, just-released Grand Theft Auto V—and was mugged on his way home. While the K word (hint: It rhymes with “pharma”) immediately comes to mind, it’s impossible to know if the assailant who made off with the game—which, The New York Times reports, begins “with an extended bout of cop killing”—was a personal fan of the crime-heavy series, or simply a thug planning to sell it on the black market. But over the past few years, a whole lot of research has found a link between playing violent video games and aggressive thoughts and behaviors.
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Smart Teenage Brains May Get Some Extra Learning Time
NPR: John Hewitt is a neuroscientist who studies the biology of intelligence. He's also a parent. Over the years, Hewitt has periodically drawn upon his scientific knowledge in making parenting decisions. "I'm a father of four children myself and I never worried too much about the environments that I was providing for my children because I thought, well, it would all work out in the end anyway — aren't the genes especially powerful?" Hewitt says. ... What Hewitt, director of the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado, is talking about is a new understanding of the interplay between your genetic inheritance and how you learn from the environment.
