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Perspectives Looks Back Over 25 Years of Science
As APS celebrates its 25th anniversary, the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science is featuring a series of special sections that take a look at how the field has changed over the last 25 years. The special section in the September issue includes articles that explore psychology as a multilevel science, advances in eyewitness science, the emergence of relationship science, and developments in the area of cognitive psychology. 25 Years Toward a Multilevel Science Marilynn B.
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The Influence of Children’s Personalities on Interventions for Aggression
All children are aggressive at one time or another; however, a small group of children display pervasive and unremitting levels of aggression. Children who display high levels of aggression are at risk for a number of negative outcomes such as school failure, drug use, and delinquency. Interventions to reduce aggressive behavior are often instituted at a young age, as nipping this behavior in the bud can prevent children from developing persistent conduct problems later in life. In the past decade, much research has been conducted on the effectiveness of interventions with children.
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Anxiety Limits Our Ability to Discriminate Faces and Speech
Anxiety can impair our accuracy on face- and word-recognition tasks, providing another possible source of fallibility in eyewitness testimony, according to research presented in two reports published in Psychological Science. In the first report, participants were asked to breathe through a mask that provided normal air or a mask that provided CO2-enriched air, a reliable method of inducing anxiety. The participants were then asked to discriminate between similar sounding phonemes, or letter sounds. For instance, though the /g/ and /k/ sounds are similar in “gift” and “kift,” people generally hear “gift” because it’s a familiar word.
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A Seat at the Table
Youth violence. Unemployment. Heart disease. Teen pregnancy. Climate change. Practically every challenge facing modern society is fueled in part by entrenched behaviors that science can help understand and perhaps change. Historically, the US government has relied heavily on economists to help set policies on healthcare, commerce, consumer protection, education, law enforcement, and other domains where psychological and behavioral factors play a major role. But the federal government is creating a team that will give a broader set of behavioral scientists a seat at the table in policymaking.
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New Society Aims to Support Affective Science
Scientists who study affective phenomena will soon have a place to interact, collaborate, and share their science with colleagues. A new society — The Society for Affective Science (SAS) — has been organized for the purpose of encouraging basic and applied research on emotions, moods, and other motivational states.
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Link Between Bipolar Disorder and Circadian Rhythm
Bipolar disorder, like most psychiatric disorders, is characterized by the frequency and severity of its symptoms. Many people may exhibit characteristics of the disorder without meeting the criteria for a diagnosis, meaning they may be
