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7-minute essay slows the loathe in marriages
Today: Could a little homework help save your marriage? Researchers in Chicago think so. They found that couples who spent just seven minutes every few months writing short essays about their recent fights reported being less unhappy a year later than similar couples who didn’t do the assignments. ... “It doesn’t make them fight less often and it doesn’t make that fight less severe. What is does is it makes them less upset about the fights that they have,” said Eli Finkel of Northwestern University, who led the study. “It was a really minimalist, easy-to-do intervention.” Read the whole story: Today See Eli J. Finkel at the 25th APS Annual Convention.
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Facial Structure May Predict Endorsement of Racial Prejudice
The structure of a man’s face may indicate his tendency to express racially prejudiced beliefs, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Studies have shown that facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) is associated with testosterone-related behaviors, which some researchers have linked with aggression. But psychological scientist Eric Hehman of Dartmouth College and colleagues at the University of Delaware speculated that these behaviors may have more to do with social dominance than outright aggression.
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Relax! You’ll Be More Productive
The New York Times: Think for a moment about your typical workday. Do you wake up tired? Check your e-mail before you get out of bed? Skip breakfast or grab something on the run that’s not particularly nutritious? Rarely get away from your desk for lunch? Run from meeting to meeting with no time in between? Find it nearly impossible to keep up with the volume of e-mail you receive? Leave work later than you’d like, and still feel compelled to check e-mail in the evenings? ... Working in 90-minute intervals turns out to be a prescription for maximizing productivity. Professor K.
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The Power of One: The Psychology of Charity
Mother Teresa famously said: “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.” There are worse people to turn to for lessons in human charity, and here Calcutta’s celebrated missionary also showed an astute grasp of cognitive psychology—and its paradoxes. Our compassion and generosity should grow as the number of poor and suffering multiplies, but the opposite seems to occur. Some numbers are just too big and abstract to grasp, so they lose their power. Modern charities might take a lesson from this quirk of human thinking.
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Name-Brand or Generic? Your Political Ideology Might Influence Your Choice
Conservatives and liberals don’t just differ when it comes to politics, they may also make different purchases at the grocery store, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Psychological research has shown that conservatives and liberals differ on basic personality traits such as conscientiousness, tolerance for uncertainty, and openness to new experience.
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Sure, I remember that
Marketplace: How accurate are our memories? Not as accurate as we’d like to think, especially when it comes to political events. This week, we look at the work of University of California, Irvine, researcher Elizabeth Loftus, a memory expert, whose research shows just how easily we can be led to “remember” events that never happened. All you have to do is show someone a doctored photograph. These false memories become all the more intense when political beliefs are factored in -- Democrats are more likely to falsely remember events that show Republicans in a bad light, and vice-versa. Read the whole story: Marketplace See Elizabeth F. Loftus at the 25th APS Annual Convention.
