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Buffering Stress with Optimism
Everything from traffic to tests can cause us to “freak out,” yet some people naturally handle stress better than others. Joëlle Jobin, 2012 APSSC Student Research Award winner, wanted to see if being an optimist or a pessimist could change the way stress affects individuals. When we stress out, our bodies release cortisol, a steroid hormone from the adrenal gland. Too much cortisol can have an adverse effect. Jobin and Carsten Wrosch, both from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, tested the association among stress, cortisol, and the buffering effect of optimism.
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Mirror Neurons Help Us Identify Emotion in Faces
Madeleine L. Werhane won an APSSC Student Research Award for her work examining mirror neurons’ role in the identification of facial emotions. She received the award in May 2012 at the 24th APS Annual Convention. Mirror neurons are unique in that they engage not only when we perform specific actions, but also when we see others performing specific actions. The same neurons that control hand and mouth actions in monkeys, for instance, are activated when one monkey sees another monkey pick up a piece of food. Mirror neurons allow humans to learn through observation and communication.
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Neuropsychological Correlates of Emotion Regulation in Women With HIV: An ERP Study
In case you missed it, Roger C. McIntosh presented his research at the APS 24th Annual Convention in Chicago, Illinois, USA. HIV-positive women are shown to demonstrate emotional deficit. The regulation of emotions is thought to require some executive function (EF) capacity. Since HIV/AIDS affects cortical areas which sub-serve EF, this study aimed to (1) use event related potentials (ERP) to determine whether HIV-positive women exhibit attenuated cortical responses while reappraising unpleasant stimuli, and (2) determine if this electrocortical activity was related to various forms of executive function.
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Music Makes a Brighter Future
Learning to play an instrument might lead us to feel more optimistic and motivated to seek opportunities, Michael M. Roy, Elizabethtown College, reported at the 24th APS Annual Convention in Chicago. In the spring of 2009, Roy and his colleagues established a fully functional concert band program in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. They returned in the fall of 2011 to assess the music program’s impact. During their initial and return visits, they measured feelings of self-esteem, optimism, positive affect, negative affect, motivation to avoid losses, and motivation to seek gains.
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Hormonal Contraception Alters Stress Hormone Response
The cameras were rolling at the APS 24th Annual Convention in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Watch as Shawn Nielsen, University of California, Irvine, describes her research. Most people remember emotionally arousing material better than neutral material partly due to the body’s natural stress response. But stress responses in women can vary during their menstrual cycle. Because ovarian sex hormone levels are commonly manipulated via hormonal contraception, Shawn Nielsen and Larry Cahill, at the Cahill Laboratory at the University of California, Irvine, hypothesized that contraceptive use would influence stress/sex hormone interactions and emotional memory.
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Save the Nerves for the Night Before
Four days left, 4 more psychological science highlights: Counting down to the Olympic Opening Ceremony, with research insights on sports and performance. #4. In Olympic competition, the margin between winning the gold and sitting in the stands often comes down to fractions of a second. Olympic athletes will be doing everything they can to gain even the slightest competitive edge. Researchers have found that feeling tense the night before a game could actually be part of gaining that edge. Recent research conducted at Northwestern University investigated whether feelings of tension play a part in swimming performance.
