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What the Language You Speak Says About You
Pacific Standard: Bad at planning for the future? You might be able to blame your language. Differences in the way various languages talk about the present and future could help explain why Germans urge free-spending Greeks to adopt their fiscal discipline, and why Americans are baffled by China’s low consumption and high savings rates, according to research published in the American Economic Review in April Keith Chen, a behavioral economist at the University of California-Los Angeles, researches intertemporal decision-making, or how people make choices when the consequences of those choices are spread out over time. Do you spend your money on a fancy sports car, or save up for retirement?
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Mitt Romney’s Face Looks Different to Republicans and Democrats
Political bias can influence how people perceive the facial characteristics of a presidential candidate – even after seeing his face on TV thousands of times, according to research forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study of Ohioans immediately before and after the 2012 presidential election showed that people’s mental representation of Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s face differed based on their political persuasion.
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Study: Teens Who Drink Alone More Likely to Develop Drinking Problems in Adulthood
Pittsburgh's NPR Station: The legal drinking age in the U.S. is 21, but as many people who’ve gone through high school and who are familiar with pop culture know, kids finds ways around that all the time. A new study from researchers at the University of Pittsburgh finds that teens that do their drinking alone may be at greater risk for alcohol problems later in life. “Most adolescents who drink alcohol do so in social settings,” said lead author Kasey Creswell.
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Reenvisioning Clinical Science Training
A group of eminent psychological scientists articulates a cutting-edge model for training in clinical science in a new special series of articles in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The model -- known as the Delaware Project -- reenvisions the way in which clinical scientists are trained, and proposes a new way of developing and implementing clinical interventions that integrates clinical practice with the latest scientific research.
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Women Hate Sexy Ads, Unless They’re for Something Expensive
TIME: Women are turned off by sexually explicit images in advertisements. Unless, that is, the item being advertised is very precious. And valuable. And rare. Like, maybe, a once a year type gift. At least, that’s the findings of a new study by an international group of marketing professors. Kathleen D. Vohs, Jaideep Sengupta and Darren W. Dahl used made-up advertisements for watches to test a theory in sexual economics that women want sex to be seen as something special, or at least not cheap. Sexual economic theory is “probably the least romantic theory about sex you’ll ever have learned,” says Vohs, who’s a researcher at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.
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Dealing With Burnout, Which Doesn’t Always Stem From Overwork
The New York Times: IT’S the end of the year, and lots of us are feeling a little overwhelmed. Tired, unfocused and ready to take a nice break with our families (or away from our families in some cases). We may be feeling garden-variety stress. Or more ominously, we may be burned out. Although most of us tend to use those phrases interchangeably, researchers say stress is to burnout as feeling a little blue is to clinical depression — a much more serious and long-term problem that doesn’t get the attention it should, but can affect all aspects of our lives and workplace. Burnout is not just when you need a vacation to recharge.
