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Why Older Adults Are Happier
LiveScience: People tend to get happier as they age, and a new study could explain why: Older adults may be better able to deal with negative emotions like anger and anxiety. In the study, older adults were less likely than younger adults to feel angry and anxious in their everyday lives, as well as when they were asked to perform a stressful task. In addition, older adults scored higher on a test designed to measure how well participants accept their negative emotions. The researchers call this trait "acceptance," or a tendency to be in touch with rather than avoid negative emotions. Read the whole story: LiveScience
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What Your Favorite Movie Treat Says About You
Parade: Joanne Chen is the author of The Taste of Sweet: Our Complicated Love Affair With Our Favorite Treats. Her Sweet Sleuth blog appears on Parade every Wednesday. Summer is almost here! And with it comes a tasty array of warm-weather sweets, from luscious plums to Popsicle sticks. But few things remind me more of sweltering Junes than a big pouch of Peanut M&M’s, enthusiastically consumed in the air-conditioned comfort of a movie theater. In anticipation of some serious summer-blockbuster viewing this holiday weekend, we dug into the annals of food research to reveal insights into what your favorite Cineplex snack might say about you. Read the whole story: Parade
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Wrinkles make faces appear sadder and madder
NBC News: Creases and furrows on someone's face may put a wrinkle in our ability to properly judge his or her emotions, a new study suggests. In the study, participants viewed photographs of 64 faces, and were asked to rate the faces based on the level of emotion they showed. People in the study rated the faces of older adults as much more sad and angry than faces of younger adults, despite the fact that all the faces had neutral expressions, according to the researchers.
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Men With High-Testosterone More Likely To Choose Red In Competitions
Toronto Telegraph: Why do so many sports players and athletes choose to wear the color red when they compete? A new study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that it may have to do with their testosterone levels. The new study, conducted by psychological scientist Daniel Farrelly of the University of Sunderland and colleagues, demonstrated that males who chose red as their color in a competitive task had higher testosterone levels than other males who chose blue. Read the whole story: Toronto Telegraph
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Revision techniques – the good, the OK and the useless
BBC: Revision charts, highlighter pens and sticky notes around the room are some of the methods people use to ensure information stays in their mind. But now psychologists in the US warn many favourite revision techniques will not lead to exam success. Universities, schools and colleges offer students a variety of ways to help them remember the content of their courses and get good grades. These include re-reading notes, summarising them and highlighting the important points. ...
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Human psychology (with emphasis on the human)
Times of Higher Education: Psychological thinking, particularly of the cognitive ilk, used to take place only in philosophy or physiology departments. For centuries, psychology did not exist as a separate discipline. Then a more experimental cognitive approach was pioneered in the late 1870s by Wilhelm Wundt, the German “father of modern psychology”, and later in the Anglo-Saxon world by American behaviourist John B. Watson. The effect was to shift the discipline into the social and educational sciences.
