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Color Yourself Happy
AARP Magazine: Having the freedom to change careers or pursue our passions makes us happier than does a hefty bank account, reports the American Psychological Association, which recently published an analysis of multiple studies. Researchers from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand analyzed questionnaires from 420,000 people in 63 countries and found that individuals able to make their own choices to start a small business, for instance claimed the highest levels of well-being. Read the whole story: AARP Magazine
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Verstehen braucht mehr als Worte
ORF Austria: Zwei aktuelle Studien betonen die wichtige Rolle des körperlichen Kontextes, beim Begreifen von Inhalten sowie bei der Wahrnehmung von Gesichtsausdrücken. Breites Ausdrucksrepertoire Sich mitteilen und einander zu verstehen, ist das Kernziel jeglicher zwischenmenschlichen Kommunikation. Im klassischen Gespräch stehen einem dafür eine ganze Reihe von Mitteln zur Verfügung. Die Sprache ist zwar zentral, aber eben nur eines von vielen. Dazu kommen etwa der Klang der Stimme, die Mimik, die Körperhaltung und die Gestik. Neben diesen individuellen nonverbalen Kanälen kommen noch das äußere Erscheinungsbild - sprich Kleider machen Leute - und kulturell gefärbte Signale hinzu.
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People rebel when they feel there is a way out
The Economic Times: People stuck with a rule are more likely to tolerate it than people who think the rule isn't definite. And this could explain many things, from unrequited love to the uprisings in the Arab world. When people were living under dictatorships in the Arab world with power that appeared to be absolute, they may have been comfortable with it, said Kristin Laurin of the University of Waterloo who led the study, the journal Psychological Science reports.
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Mothers buy into freeze-frame parenting
Los Angeles Times: Instructed to play with my baby, Max, for 20 minutes while he sat in an infant seat, no toys allowed, I pulled out every trick in the book. Sign language ABCs. An animated version of "Itsy Bitsy Spider." All the time, a camera was trained on my face, another on his. I returned a few weeks later to see the results: Aimee Wheeler, a therapist, had synched up the footage into one split-screen video and analyzed all the tiny interactions between us, frame by frame by frame. "Great narrative. Jenny gives Max space to acclimate to the room," says one page of Wheeler's notes. "Jenny's contact turns into a gentle invitation for play with stroking of feet," says another.
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Sports Fans Remember Victories Better Than Defeats: Study
U.S. News & World Report: You're more likely to remember the games that your favorite teams win rather than the ones they lose, a new study says. It included almost 1,600 baseball fans who followed or attended the 2003 and 2004 American League Championship baseball games between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. When questioned years later, fans of both teams remembered more details about their teams' wins than their losses, including the location of the games, winning and losing pitchers and whether the games went extra innings. The study is published in the October issue of the journal Psychological Science.
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Psychologists Stress the Importance of Memory in Preventing Relapse after Therapy
Addictions, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder—such painful and harmful problems are recalcitrant to treatment. In the clinic, a person may suppress the association between the stimulus and the response—say, a bar with ashtrays and smoking—by learning to pair the stimulus with a new memory not involving smoking. But once out in the world, faced with bars and ashtrays aplenty, he relapses into the old behavior. Some treatment aims at helping the patient avoid locations and stimuli that trigger the harmful behavior. A new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, says this is not the most effective route.
