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How to handle an angry boss
CBS News: New research from a team of Stanford researchers shows that the state of mind in which a person listens to an angry outburst has a big effect on whether or not they actually get upset. It gives some clues to help anyone lessen the impact of being yelled at, either by an angry boss or an angry spouse. A common technique often recommended by cognitive-behavioral therapists tries to give people a different framework through which to view an angry person. So if someone is yelling at you, you might tell yourself that they've just received some bad news about their job or about a family member, and are now taking it out on you.
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Popping a multivitamin can lead to debauchery
msnbc: Taking supplements may lead to poorer health, not because of what they do to your body, but what they do to your mind. When people take supplements they get a false sense of invulnerability, a new study shows. And that can translate into a greater tendency to head down the path of risky behavior. The intriguing study published in Psychological Science, found that people didn’t even need to be given real supplements for this devil-may-care attitude to develop – they just needed to be told they were swallowing something healthful. Read the full story: msnbc
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Sorry, Strivers: Talent Matters
The New York Times: How do people acquire high levels of skill in science, business, music, the arts and sports? This has long been a topic of intense debate in psychology. Research in recent decades has shown that a big part of the answer is simply practice — and a lot of it. In a pioneering study, the Florida State University psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues asked violin students at a music academy to estimate the amount of time they had devoted to practice since they started playing.
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Can you catch stress?
AOL UK: Are you surrounded by stressed-out colleagues complaining about their jobs, or friends whining about their boyfriends? Then watch out, because their stress and anxiety is as contagious as a common cold. That's the theory of a leading professor of psychology, Dr Elaine Hatfield, from the University of Hawaii. 'All emotions – joy, fear, sadness and stress – have been shown to be contagious,' she told us. 'It's called "emotional contagion". Read the full story: AOL UK
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Engaging undergrads with Wikipedia
Scientific American: Longtime science blog readers will certainly remember the popular cognitive psychology blog Cognitive Daily, written by Greta and Dave Munger, that had a fantastic five-year run at Scienceblogs. While Dave is still involved in the science blogging community through projects like Research Blogging and Science Seeker, and of course writing his own blogs, Greta has been pushing forward with online science communication in a slightly different way: working with her undergraduate psychology students at Davidson College in updating and improving psychology-related entries on Wikipedia.
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New Evidence of an Unrecognized Visual Process
We don’t see only what meets the eye. The visual system constantly takes in ambiguous stimuli, weighs its options, and decides what it perceives. This normally happens effortlessly. Sometimes, however, an ambiguity is persistent, and the visual system waffles on which perception is right. Such instances interest scientists because they help us understand how the eyes and the brain make sense of what we see. Most scientists believe rivalry occurs only when there’s “spatial conflict”—two objects striking the same place on the retina at the same time as our eyes move. But the retina isn’t the only filter or organizer of visual information.
