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Psychology’s Role in the Criminalization of Blackness
Podcast: Evan Auguste and Steven Kasparek examine how psychology has contributed to anti-Blackness within psychological research, criminal justice, and mental health, and what scientists and practitioners can do to interrupt the criminalization of Blackness and redefine psychology’s relationship with justice.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
A sample of research on shared depressive symptoms in close relationships, correlates of interrupted and aborted suicide attempts among U.S. active duty service members, maximizing rationality with post-justificationist knowledge, and much more.
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Want to Make a Change? Conjure Your ‘Possible Selves.’
Years ago, as a young business reporter, I interviewed an advertising executive who ran a fast-food chain account. I was there to ask about the latest campaign. But when I sat down, he wanted to talk about writing fiction. He spent hours meeting with clients and crafting slogans, but he dreamed of being a novelist instead. I remember thinking: Sure, you and everybody else. A decade or so later, however, I was surprised to see the adman on TV, holding up his new book. James Patterson had morphed from advertising executive into best-selling author.
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People in the U.S. Think They Are Better Than They Actually Are. People in Asia Don’t
How competent are you, compared with your colleagues? When psychologists approach teams of coworkers with variations of this question, an interesting pattern emerges. If people have a truly realistic perspective of their abilities, then their self-assessments should generally fall around the middle. Instead psychologists have repeatedly found that people’s self-assessments are inflated. In fact, superstars and underperformers alike tend to think they are better than they truly are. This effect is one example of a positive illusion: a cognitive bias that makes you feel more competent, more blessed, more fortunate and better than you are.
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How Gen Z Changed Its Views on Gender
When I talked to teens for my book iGen in 2015 and 2016, most were skeptical about transgender identities. “They’re just confused,” said one. Another said, “They weren’t born that way. I feel like they’re denying their previous existence. They’re not true to themselves and I kind of don’t like it.” Those beliefs, it turns out, were so mid-2010s. In a 2019 poll, two-thirds of U.S. young adults said they had become increasingly supportive of transgender rights over the last five years. Today’s teens not only support transgender rights, but arrive home from school excited when one of their friends comes out as trans. ...
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Combating the ‘Microstress’ That Causes Burnout
Have you had days that exhaust you extraordinarily without any particular reason why? There’s no traumatic event or unpleasant encounter that stands out, no urgent work deadline or health issue weighing on you, nothing hovering in the background that you failed to take care of at home. Yet you feel anxious or beaten down just the same, and perhaps worse, you have no idea why. There’s a common but little-understood reason for that exhaustion. We call it “microstress”—brief, frequent moments of everyday tension that accumulate and impede us even though we don’t register them.
