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It’s flu season. Watch your prejudices.
I tried not to breathe too much on the elevator this morning. I was trying to avoid the germs of a fellow who clearly had the flu—or at least a nasty cold. There seems to be a lot of sickness going around right now, and I’m just being prudent. I know it would have been rude to cover my face or turn my back to this guy, so I just held my breath for the 10-story ride. That’s my behavioral immune system kicking in. Behavioral immune system is just a fancy way of summarizing what the mind and body have long known, that one of the most powerful tools we have for staying well is to watch out for sick people, and then give them wide berth.
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A defense for Thanksgiving
The Washington Post: Thanksgiving is under assault. Stores that once closed their doors in deference to the holiday are now touting Turkey Day deals starting as early as 9 p.m. Workers who should be on vacation are answering office e-mails on their smartphones. And those who plan on celebrating with a traditional dinner are finding that the cost of a bird is near its 30-year high, according to government data. “I think we have a sort of Norman Rockwell view of Thanksgiving,” said Kit Yarrow, head of the psychology department at Golden Gate University in San Francisco.
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Statisticians can prove almost anything, a new study finds
National Post: Catchy headlines about the latest counter-intuitive discovery in human psychology have a special place in journalism, offering a quirky distraction from the horrors of war and crime, the tedium of politics and the drudgery of economics. But even as readers smirk over the latest gee whizzery about human nature, it is generally assumed that behind the headlines, in the peer-reviewed pages of academia, most scientists are engaged in sober analysis of rigorously gathered data, and that this leads them reliably to the truth.
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Dietary Supplements Instill Illusion of Invincibility
LiveScience: Imagine a pill that can make you invincible to the dangers of smoking, overeating or other hedonistic pursuits? Some people might think such a pill exists at the local pharmacy in the form of a daily vitamin, two new studies reveal. Researchers from Taiwan found that smokers instructed to take a daily multivitamin smoked more cigarettes than smokers not taking a multivitamin. These results appear in the December issue of the journal Addiction.
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The Psychological Science Behind an Oops Moment
Over the last week or so, the phrase “brain freeze” has taken on a new meaning and caused a bit of media frenzy – first over Rick Perry’s debate flub on television, followed immediately by Herman Cain’s floundering on a question. A moment like this can happen to the best of us, whether it is captured live on national television or in private. The media has focused extensively on these two politicians and their momentary lapses in memory, but perhaps it is time to examine the psychological science of these kinds of brain-freeze moments and why they occur.
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Mom-to-be's mental state may affect child's development
USA Today: A fetus is sensitive to, and can be affected by, the expectant mother's mental state, a new study suggests. University of California, Irvine, researchers recruited pregnant women and tested them for depression before and after they gave birth. The women's babies were tested after birth to assess how well they were developing. Consistency in the mother's mental state appeared to be important to a baby's well-being. Development was best in babies with mothers who were either depression-free or had depression before and after giving birth.
