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21 minutes to a happier marriage
The Boston Globe: How much time do you have to put in to improve your marriage? Maybe less than you think. A team of psychologists surveyed heterosexual married couples over the Internet about their relationships every four months for two years. After the first year, the survey also asked half of the couples to write for seven minutes about reappraising their disagreements from a neutral third-party perspective. Read the whole story: The Boston Globe See Eli J. Finkel at the 25th APS Annual Convention.
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Into The Hole: Terror And Survival
I know an artist who has a special interest in holes. He laboriously sculpts geometric holes in the earth, and then recreates them elsewhere. I recently saw, in a Chicago gallery, a hole he had sculpted in California, surrounded by outsize photographs of other similar holes. The overall effect was seductive and mysterious. Not everyone finds holes seductive and mysterious. Indeed, some people find holes—and images of holes—deeply upsetting, even terrifying. These people suffer from a common but little known phobia known as trypophobia. Phobias are by definition irrational and excessive, and indeed trypophobia sufferers recognize that their fear is unreasonable.
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Summoning the Past: Why This and Not That?
The Huffington Post: My memory baffles me. There is no rhyme or reason to what I recall and what I forget, whether it's today's to-do list or recollections of childhood. Important information vanishes, yet I have a random collection of odd facts and memory traces taking up space in my mind. ... The results supported the scientists' idea. As summarized in an article to be published in the journal Psychological Science, words for animate objects were much more likely to be remembered than were words for inanimate objects. Indeed, animacy was one of the most potent influences on retention and recall -- along with imagery.
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Why Faking a Smile Is a Good Thing
Forbes: We think of our face as reflecting our internal emotions, but that linkage works both ways – we can change our emotional state by altering our facial expression! Pasting a smile on your face, even if you are consciously faking it, can improve your mood and reduce stress. ... A few months ago, new research was published in Psychological Science by Kansas researchers Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman. They used a rather unusual way of getting their subjects to simulate different smiles: the subjects held chopsticks in their mouth in different configurations to form smiles and neutral expressions.
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New Research on Memory From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research on memory published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Modifying Memory: Selectively Enhancing and Updating Personal Memories for a Museum Tour by Reactivating Them Peggy L. St. Jacques and Daniel L. Schacter Although researchers know that memories can be modified when they are retrieved, less is known about how the properties of reactivation affect memory. Researchers sent participants on a self-guided tour of a museum with a camera that automatically took pictures of their visit.
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Mental Health Care Needs an ‘Anytime, Anywhere’ Model
The Huffington Post: Many routine but important medical services today are far more convenient to obtain than they were a generation ago. Home pregnancy tests, personal blood glucose test kits, and flu shots at retail pharmacies are examples of health care functions that once required a visit to the doctor. Phone and tablet applications are allowing consumers to monitor everything from calorie intake to vital signs. Nurses, nurse assistants, and pharmacologists provide services once reserved for physicians. So how could these types of conveniences transfer to mental health services? Read the whole story: The Huffington Post
