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Imaging study reveals differences in brain function for children with math anxiety
Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have shown for the first time how brain function differs in people who have math anxiety from those who don’t. A series of scans conducted while second- and third-grade students did addition and subtraction revealed that those who feel panicky about doing math had increased activity in brain regions associated with fear, which caused decreased activity in parts of the brain involved in problem-solving.
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Conflicting Moralities
The Wall Street Journal: The work of Jonathan Haidt often infuriates his fellow liberals. A professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, he has focused in recent years on trying to understand the range and variety of our moral intuitions, especially as they relate to the most polarizing issues of the day. What he sees across the dividing line of American politics is a battle of unequals: Republicans who "understand moral psychology" arrayed against Democrats who "don't." Mr. Haidt is not simply parroting the familiar charge that the party of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove is more adept at the dark arts of political manipulation.
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Context for Fla. shooting? Study finds holding gun makes you likely to think others have guns
The Washington Post: No one knows what led a Florida neighborhood watch captain to shoot Trayvon Martin, a teenager carrying no weapon. But a new study raises an intriguing question: Could the watch captain have been fooled into thinking the youth was armed in part because he himself was holding a gun? In the study, volunteers who held a toy gun and glimpsed fleeting images of people holding an object were biased toward thinking the object was a gun.
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Shivering Liberals, Parched Conservatives
The Huffington Post: Imagine you're reading a newspaper and you come across an article about a woman lost in a nearby forest. She had hiked several miles to a small cabin for a bit of an escape from her stressful work life, and a freak spring snowstorm dropped eight inches of powder overnight as the temperature plummeted. This forest is difficult to navigate under the best of conditions, and the woman is a fairly inexperienced hiker. Her family and friends are concerned because she didn't pack food or water for a long stay, and she dressed for mild weather. Rangers are combing the forest. How do you feel about this woman as you read her story?
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Why Rose-Colored Glasses May Be Just What the Relationship Doc Ordered
Glamour: Yeah, we all know there's no such thing as the perfect guy (OK, maybe 69 percent perfect), but when we're happy and in love, some of us think our guys are sent from heaven above. And while in the past, there have been conflicting reports on whether idealizing your partner is actually beneficial for your relationship, a new study in Psychology Today says it helps to keep the love alive—even after you say "I do." The study, published in Psychological Science, looked at how idealizing partners impacted marriage satisfaction by following 193 newlyweds over three years. Researchers then asked participants to rate their partners, themselves and their "ideal" mates.
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Be Nice To Yourself
Prevention: “Be kind to yourself.” If you keep good company, someone has probably uttered these words to you at some point, maybe during a particularly hard spell, or at a time when you were being a little too harsh on yourself. It’s always sound advice—irksome though it may be to hear at the time—but new research published in Psychological Science reveals it’s especially apropos when you’re dealing with a broken heart. Self-compassion, according to researchers, may just be the secret to bouncing back after a breakup. In the study, researchers met with recently divorced people to assess how they were coping.
