-
Why Faking a Smile Is a Good Thing
Forbes: We think of our face as reflecting our internal emotions, but that linkage works both ways – we can change our emotional state by altering our facial expression! Pasting a smile on your face, even if you are consciously faking it, can improve your mood and reduce stress. ... A few months ago, new research was published in Psychological Science by Kansas researchers Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman. They used a rather unusual way of getting their subjects to simulate different smiles: the subjects held chopsticks in their mouth in different configurations to form smiles and neutral expressions.
-
New Research on Memory From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research on memory published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Modifying Memory: Selectively Enhancing and Updating Personal Memories for a Museum Tour by Reactivating Them Peggy L. St. Jacques and Daniel L. Schacter Although researchers know that memories can be modified when they are retrieved, less is known about how the properties of reactivation affect memory. Researchers sent participants on a self-guided tour of a museum with a camera that automatically took pictures of their visit.
-
Mental Health Care Needs an ‘Anytime, Anywhere’ Model
The Huffington Post: Many routine but important medical services today are far more convenient to obtain than they were a generation ago. Home pregnancy tests, personal blood glucose test kits, and flu shots at retail pharmacies are examples of health care functions that once required a visit to the doctor. Phone and tablet applications are allowing consumers to monitor everything from calorie intake to vital signs. Nurses, nurse assistants, and pharmacologists provide services once reserved for physicians. So how could these types of conveniences transfer to mental health services? Read the whole story: The Huffington Post
-
To Spot Kids Who Will Overcome Poverty, Look At Babies
NPR: Why do some children who grow up in poverty do well, while others struggle? To understand more about this, a group of psychologists recently did a study. It began in a small spare room where a series of very poor mothers and their 5-month-old babies came to watch a soothing video. Soothing the baby was the point, says Elisabeth Conradt, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University's Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk. The researchers needed to take measurements of the babies when they were calm.
-
We Aren’t the World
Pacific Standard: IN THE SUMMER of 1995, a young graduate student in anthropology at UCLA named Joe Henrich traveled to Peru to carry out some fieldwork among the Machiguenga, an indigenous people who live north of Machu Picchu in the Amazon basin. The Machiguenga had traditionally been horticulturalists who lived in single-family, thatch-roofed houses in small hamlets composed of clusters of extended families. For sustenance, they relied on local game and produce from small-scale farming. They shared with their kin but rarely traded with outside groups. ... So instead of toeing the line, he switched teams.
-
How Stress Gets Under the Skin: Q&A With Neuroscientist Bruce McEwen
TIME: A professor of neuroscience at Rockefeller University, Bruce McEwen investigates how stress affects the mind and brain. What are some common misconceptions about stress?I’ll start with several pet peeves: that all stress is bad for you and that cortisol [a stress hormone] is bad for you because it’s easy to measure as a marker of stress. These stress systems were put there to help the body adapt and survive. They have a good side and a bad side.That’s the essence of [what I have labeled] allostatic load: these systems, which help us adapt and survive can also cause problems when they are overused.
