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Want to drive better? Play these types of video games, says new study
Gizmag: Remember all those years you spent in your youth playing Half-Life and Timesplitters on your PS2, and how your parents would yell at you because they couldn't understand how playing video games would help you get ahead in the real world? Well, now you can call them up and show them scientific evidence that all those years you spent with a controller in your hands might just have made you a better driver. ... The study was published on Friday in the journal Psychological Science. Researchers conducted an experiment using test subjects who did not have any previous experience playing video games and separated them into two groups. Read the whole story: Gizmag
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Why Trump and Clinton Are America’s Most Disliked Presidential Candidates
Fortune: As the Republican and Democratic national conventions draw near, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton find themselves among the most disliked presidential candidates in U.S. history. Americans have registered their negative views for the candidates in poll after poll, and their dissatisfaction runs deep. Why is the dislike for the leading presidential candidates so widespread? And is it possible to change voters’ opinions? ... A good reputation, in contrast, requires not only doing good deeds, but also not doing bad deeds. People tend to judge immoral behaviors harshly and judge moral behaviors with skepticism, according to our study recently published in the journal Social Cognition.
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For Effective Brain Fitness, Do More Than Play Simple Games
The New York Times: WHEN a “brain fitness” course was introduced at her retirement community, Connie Cole was eager to sign up. After joining, she learned how to use an Apple iPad and work more complex tasks verbally and on paper. “My father had dementia, so I’ll do anything I can,” said Ms. Cole, 86, a former elementary schoolteacher who also plays Sudoku puzzles every morning. “If I can give my kids anything, it’s to stay away from having it.” Truth is, there is no known cure for dementia, or any evidence that exercising the brain in different ways can delay the onset of Alzheimer’s.
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Revenge Is Bittersweet, Research Finds
LiveScience: Revenge is a dish best served cold. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die. The culture is swimming with depictions of revenge: Sometimes it's deeply satisfying, sometimes it injures the avenger, and sometimes it's a little bit of both. ... "We show that people express both positive and negative feelings about revenge, such that revenge isn't bitter, nor sweet, but both," Fade Eadeh, a doctoral candidate in psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, said in a statement.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: A Safe Haven: Investigating Social-Support Figures as Prepared Safety Stimuli Erica A. Hornstein, Michael S. Fanselow, and Naomi I. Eisenberger Research has shown that fear learning occurs more readily with certain stimuli such as snakes and spiders, perhaps because these types of stimuli have historically threatened humans' survival. Although fear conditioning to these prepared fear stimuli has been examined, little research has studied their parallels -- prepared safety stimuli (i.e., stimuli that have historically benefited survival).
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Failure, Emotions, and Explaining It to Your Boss
We all make mistakes in the workplace at one point or another, but is there an optimal way to explain it to your supervisor? In a 2015 paper published by Europe’s Journal of Psychology, David and Hareli Shlomo and APS Fellow Ursula Hess investigated whether showing emotion (or the lack thereof) and whether admitting guilt, blaming someone else, or giving an ambiguous response after a service failure could impact the believability of an employee’s account and their chances of being fired or promoted. The researchers recruited business school alumni from the University of Haifa in Israel to participate in an online experiment.
