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MILLENNIALS MAY NOT BE SUCH NARCISSISTS AFTER ALL
With each new generation, Americans are growing more narcissistic. That assertion, which has been backed up by research, has spread widely, presumably because it makes intuitive sense. It's easy to surmise that growing up in a world of selfies and social media would lead kids to worship their own reflections. However, this narrative has been challenged. And just-published research suggests it may be based on a misreading, or misinterpretation, of some widely cited data. ... "There may never have been an epidemic of narcissism," writes a team led by psychologists Eunike Wetzel of the University of Konstanz and Brent Roberts of the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
A sample of new research exploring continuous traumatic stress, biases in clinical paranoia, and the role of clinicians’ own theories in reasoning about interventions.
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Nobel in Economics Is Awarded to Richard Thaler
The New York Times: Richard H. Thaler, whose work has persuaded many economists to pay more attention to human behavior, and many governments to pay more attention to economics, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday. Professor Thaler is the rare economist to win a measure of fame before winning the prize. He is an author of a best-selling book, “Nudge,” about helping people to make better decisions. He also appeared in the 2015 film “The Big Short,” delivering what is surely one of the most widely viewed tutorials in the history of economics, on the causes of the 2008 financial crisis. ...
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Research reveals that divorce does run in the family
New Zealand Herald: Numerous studies have shown that children of divorced parents are more likely to get divorced when compared to those who grew up with parents who remained married. But this pattern may not hold true for adopted children, a new study suggests. According to the Daily Mail, the research, genetic factors are the primary explanation for the divorce trend, and the new findings could have implications for the advice provided by marriage counsellors or therapists. The new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue Journal Psychological Science, was conducted by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and Lund University in Sweden.
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Does Your Gut Always Steer You Right?
The Wall Street Journal: You have an important decision to make. You’ve done research, made a list of the pros and cons, asked friends and family for advice. When should you just trust your gut? ... John Bargh, a psychology professor at Yale and director of the ACME (Automaticity in Cognition, Motivation, and Evaluation) Laboratory, has a book coming out this month: “Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do.” Dr. Bargh says that we tend to trust our gut reactions more than our rational ones because they happen so quickly we think they must be true. But there is a problem with this belief, he says: Our emotional states change what our gut tells us.
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President Trump believes in IQ tests. He’s not wrong.
The Washington Post: Most scientists feel a certain nervousness when the topic they research appears in the news. Overstatement is par for the course, misunderstanding a near-inevitability. But what could be more cringe-worthy than the president of the United States engaging in a macho contest with his secretary of state over the area you research? I am, of course, talking about IQ testing. ... In fact, IQ tests tell us much more than that, as a mountain of evidence from the fields of psychology, sociology, neuroscience, genetics and epidemiology attests.
