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Advice for Online Daters: If You’re a Guy, Don’t Smile
TIME: Men, if you're trying to lure the ladies with a photograph, make like James Dean and brood. Women are turned off by guys who smile, according to a new study published in the American Psychological Association's journal Emotion. Men, however, were most attracted to photos of smiling women, the study found. And both men and women said they were attracted to people with a look of shame. The findings may have something to say about how non-verbal cues like posture and expression affect initial sexual attraction in both genders. Read more: TIME
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The dark side of happiness
Irish Medical Times: I knew it all along. Happiness kills. A study of traits in children which may lead to longer or shorter lives is quite conclusive in its findings: happy, cheerful youngsters are doomed to an early grave (see article in latest Perspectives on Psychological Science, May 18, 2011, vol. 6 no. 3 222-233 (doi: 10.1177/1745691611406927). The results are surprising — to some people at least. Not to me and other lifelong dysfunctionals. Remarks in a school report which state that the brat in question is ‘very cheery’ or ‘very cheerful’ or ‘happy’ are the kiss of death. Read more at : Irish Medical Times
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A Time to Kill
Science: A runaway trolley is about to kill five railroad workers. The only way to stop it is to shove a huge man next to you onto the tracks. Would you kill that man to save five? That is one of the standard moral dilemmas that scientists are using to study how people decide between right and wrong. But is it the best example? When was the last time you faced a runaway trolley? To see how people deal with more realistic choices, Joshua Greene, a psychologist at Harvard University, and his undergraduate student Katie Ransohoff, turned to medicine and public health. Read the whole story: Science
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Stereotypical men, women more realistic
Times of India: The psychologists said that it is a very difficult skill to master, but stereotypical male and female are almost always accurate in their predictions of who wants to date them. In Psychological Science, psychology professor Mitja Back and his colleagues report that they studied several hundred participants in a German speed-dating group. They asked each participant to take a psychological test aimed at assessing how "sociosexually unrestricted" the men were, and how "agreeable" the women were. Read more: Times of India
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Monkeys Might Be More Logical Than We Think
You see a big cat nursing a kitten, and you assume Cat A is Cat B’s mother. Then you see a bird dropping worms in a smaller bird’s mouth. Different content, different context, but same relationship—you conclude that Big Bird is Little Bird’s mom. This is an analogy—a relationship between relationships. What is behind this ability—and is it uniquely human? “There is a long debate as to whether this ability is dependent on language,” says Center for Research in Cognitive Neurosciences and University of Provence cognitive psychologist Joël Fagot. “It has been shown in apes who have been language trained.” But can animals perceive analogies without language?
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Put your stress on vacation
Los Angeles Times: Got stress? If you answered no, hooray for you! (And, by the way, what planet are you from?) But if you answered yes (like any normal member of the human race), you're likely heartened by the arrival of vacation season. Just the ticket for a little stress-reduction. And that can have some big payoffs. It can lower your blood pressure, boost your immune system and help you live longer. It may even make you smarter. "A vacation is not a luxury," says Jens Pruessner, an associate professor in the departments of psychology, psychiatry, neurology and neurosurgery at McGill University in Montreal.
