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Matig alcoholgebruik stimulans voor het groepsgevoel
Express Belgium: Een matig gebruik van alcohol in een sociale omgeving kan een stimulans betekenen voor positieve emoties en groepsvorming en bovendien negatieve emoties helpen afzwakken. Dat is de conclusie van een onderzoek van wetenschappers aan de University of Pittsburgh. Eerdere research had weliswaar aangevoerd dat alcohol kan leiden tot negatieve gevoelens en stress, maar daarbij is volgens de onderzoekers in Pittsburgh vooral gekeken naar individuele consumptie. Er wordt aan toegevoegd dat de conclusies opgaan voor zowel mannen als vrouwen.
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Why Thinking About Your Death May Prompt You to Save the Planet
TIME: Thinking about your own death isn’t usually the most pleasant experience, but it can be a beneficial one. Reminders of our own mortality can increase our desire to make decisions that will leave long-term, positive impacts on generations to come, according to a new study published in Psychological Science. Momentary social cues about death, such as reading about a death in the newspaper or walking past a funeral hall, activate the “legacy motive,” which contributes to the drive to gain a sense of purpose in life and to make an impact that will live on after death.
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Study: Children Internalize Stereotypes About Abilities
Education Week: Have you ever heard a girl say she hates math because she's "no good" at it? I've heard it plenty of times, even from my own daughter who actually has an aptitude for the subject. Research has shown that children believe their ability to do certain things depends on how much natural ability they have for the task. These so-called "entity theories" can affect their performance. And now a recent study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that involved 4- to 7-year-olds suggests that children can adopt these beliefs from information they hear about their gender or certain social groups.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about new research using electrophysiological recording methods recently published in Psychological Science. Electrophysiological Examination of Embodiment in Vision and Action Jeremy Goslin, Thomas Dixon, Martin H. Fischer, Angelo Cangelosi, and Rob Ellis This study examined the link between the visual properties of objects and the motor actions associated with those objects. Participants viewed objects with handles facing leftward or rightward and answered questions about the objects by pressing buttons with their left or right hand. In some cases, the button push corresponded with the direction of the handle (congruent), and in other cases it did not (incongruent).
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This column will change your life: the mind-body connection
The Guardian: In the 1988 comedy Big, you may recall, a 12-year-old boy is transported into the body of Tom Hanks – a nightmarish twist on Kafka's Metamorphosis, in which the protagonist gets off comparatively lightly by being transported into the body of a giant beetle. Neither story's believable, of course, but as the psychologist Paul Bloom points out, what's interesting is that they don't strike us as meaningless, either: on some level, we can imagine how it might feel to wake up in another body. That's because most of us are what philosophers call "dualists": intuitively, we think of mind and body as two different entities, neither reducible to the other.
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Erst abschalten, dann aufdrehen (Turn off first, then turn on)
Suddeutsche Zeitung: Alles ist zu viel. Immer. Die Stapel auf dem Schreibtisch wachsen stetig in die Höhe, werden umsortiert, hin und her geschoben und erinnern den Büromenschen doch nur ans tägliche Scheitern. Wieder die eigenen Ansprüche verfehlt, wieder nicht alle Mails beantwortet. Nach Dienstschluss fällt dann zwar die Bürotür ins Schloss, doch die Arbeit begleitet viele Menschen nach Hause und ins Privatleben. Das E-Mail-Postfach lässt sich auch auf dem Smartphone checken, während die Kinder die Zähne putzen. Am Projekt lässt sich auch am Wochenende feilen.
