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The National Sadness of Sandy Hook
It’s been almost two years since 20-year-old Adam Lanza walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and gunned down 20 children and six adults, before killing himself. It was one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history—the worst ever in an elementary school. In the wake of this unthinkable tragedy, Americans were enveloped in a national sadness. The murders took place on December 14th. Psychological theory and common wisdom both say that the intensity of our emotions surrounding Sandy Hook should have diminished by now. But is this true?
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Can People Tell When They’re Too Sleepy to Drive Safely?
Drowsy driving may receive less media attention than drunk driving, but research shows that it’s startlingly common and can be just as dangerous as driving while drunk. A 2010 poll from the AAA Foundation found
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“Tears of Joy” May Help Us Maintain Emotional Balance
Many life experiences, such as witnessing the birth of a child or finally achieving a long sought-after goal, can lead to what may seem like confusing expressions of emotion, like tears of joy. But new research suggests that these incongruous expressions may serve a fundamental purpose, helping us to maintain emotional balance. The findings are forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “People may be restoring emotional equilibrium with these expressions,” said psychological scientist and lead researchers Oriana Aragon of Yale University.
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Summer-Haters Get Happy as Days Get Shorter
The Wall Street Journal: Many people get the blues as winter sets in. They experience rolling back the clock to end daylight-saving time and commuting home in the dark as a downer. Not so for Travis Hare. “I prefer colder temps and shorter days,” says Mr. Hare, co-principal of a Washington, D.C., marketing and public-relations firm. The 34-year-old hikes in the snow, vacations in Iceland and regards a day at the beach as a hot, sweaty bore. “The only time I like things hot is when I’m having coffee—preferably when it’s cold outside,” he says.
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Why Your Brain Wants To Help One Child In Need — But Not Millions
NPR: Why do people sometimes give generously to a cause — and other times give nothing at all? That's a timely question, because humanitarian groups fighting the Ebola outbreak need donations from people in rich countries. But some groups say they're getting less money than they'd expect from donors despite all the news. Psychologist Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon has some answers that may surprise you. In one study, Slovic told volunteers about a young girl suffering from starvation and then measured how much the volunteers were willing to donate to help her.
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Just Looking at Cash Makes People Selfish and Less Social
The Atlantic: When it comes to money, people aren’t pursuing stacks of green paper or a collection of copper disks—they’re interested in what those objects represent. The pull of money, the economy and most behavioral research agree, is symbolic. But what if the medium of exchange—cash itself—can change the way people behave? A study to be published next month in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology points toward that possibility. Its authors found, through a series of six experiments, that people who were prompted to think about money—literally just shown a picture of bills or coins—were more likely to conceal their emotions than those who viewed non-financial imagery.
