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BELIEF IN A NOBLE ‘TRUE SELF’ MAY HELP HEAL OUR DIVISIONS
Down deep, people are basically good. That's a debatable proposition, but a widely held one, and it could be key to reducing the hostility toward perceived outsiders that is threatening the social fabric of the United States. Two Harvard University psychologists make that intriguing argument in a newly published study. They write that, while the familiar my-group-good, your-group-bad mindset may be firmly implanted in the human psyche, there's an even deeper belief that is far more benign—and can potentially be harnessed to reduce hate and hostility.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research from Clinical Psychological Science: What Drives False Memories in Psychopathology? A Case for Associative Activation Henry Otgaar, Peter Muris, Mark L. Howe, and Harald Merckelbach Memories play an influential role in both clinical and legal settings because memory anomalies are characteristic of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. For example, PTSD has been shown to incorporate poorly elaborated and integrated memories, which may lead to problems with intentional recall, whereas depression has been linked to distinct autobiographical memory problems.
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Teams Can Bounce Back From Early Conflicts Better Than Ever
Cognitive reappraisal training could benefit teams more than formal conflict resolution or team-building exercises would.
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What Experts Know About Men Who Rape
He sat by his phone, skeptical that it would ring. “I didn’t think that anyone would want to respond,” said Samuel D. Smithyman, now 72 and a clinical psychologist in South Carolina. But the phone did ring. Nearly 200 times. ... Early studies relied heavily on convicted rapists. This skewed the data, said Neil Malamuth, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has been studying sexual aggression for decades. Men in prison are often “generalists,” he said: “They would steal your television, your watch, your car.
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The Power of Pretending: What Would a Hero Do?
Sometime or other, almost all of us secretly worry that we’re just impostors—bumbling children masquerading as competent adults. Some of us may deal with challenges by pretending to be a fictional hero instead of our unimpressive selves. I vividly remember how channeling Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet got me through the awkwardness of teen courtship. But can you really fake it till you make it?
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What’s Normal?
After election day, “This is not normal” became a rallying cry for Donald Trump’s opponents: Harry Reid warned against press coverage that normalized the president-elect; a John Oliver monologue about Trump being abnormal won 14 million YouTube views; this is not normal T-shirts popped up around the country. But in July, after critics opined that his bullying tweets were “not normal,” Trump tweeted back that his social-media usage, far from deviant, was simply “MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL.” Maybe he’s hit on an uncomfortable truth: Even abhorrent things can become standard. Could his behavior become normal? ... Complicating matters, our sense of what’s ideal can be fickle.
