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Independence Day Science — Insights From Psychological Science
Patriotic and Happy How you feel about your country may affect how you feel about your life. Data from an international poll (that included responses from over 130,000 individuals from 128 countries) showed that national satisfaction (i.e., satisfaction with one's country) was a strong predictor of life satisfaction (i.e., subjective well-being). This relationship was strongest in the poorest countries and among individuals with the least income.
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Walking: Good for More than Your Waistline
Imagine you’re at a party and a new acquaintance comes over to say hello. In a blind moment of panic you realize that you’ve just met the person, but you can’t remember their name. Sound familiar? Memory is so important in our daily lives, and it can be frustrating (not to mention embarrassing) when we have trouble recalling information. But can we improve our memories? According to researchers Carlos Salas (University of Illinois at Chicago), Katsumi Minakata (California State University, Long Beach), and William Kelemen (California State University, Long Beach), the answer may be as simple as taking a short walk.
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Sweet Revenge: Gustatory Experience and Vengeful Action
In case you missed it the cameras were rolling! Jens H. Hellmann from University of Münster, Germany presented his research at the APS 24th Annual Convention in Chicago, Illinois, USA in English and German. English German: The present experiment examined whether "revenge tastes sweet": We found that the evaluation of a vengeful act was more positive when participants had a sweet (vs. neutral) taste in their mouths. Furthermore, this relatively more positive evaluation did not emerge when the motive for the evaluated action was not revenge. Jens H. Hellmann University of Münster, Germany Deborah F. Thoben Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg, Germany
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Fear of Pain Can Lead to Suffering
People go to great lengths to avoid pain. And that avoidance, ironically, may be a cause of chronic pain. When a person is injured, they begin to associate the injury with the activity that caused it, and they will avoid that activity – and other activities. In the short term, avoidance may promote healing, but over time, fear of pain may actually initiate chronic pain, leading to disability and depression. Psychological scientists in this symposium shared many approaches for investigating this surprising model of pain behavior. One technique was based on classical conditioning, in which volunteers were given a shock in response to a particular movement they performed.
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Math Creating a Division
Quick: What’s 136 divided by 17? Knowing the answer to division problems like this could help the whole country. Over the past 30 years, mathematics achievement of U.S. high school students has remained stagnant—and significantly behind many other countries, including China, Japan, Finland, the Netherlands, and Canada. Robert Siegler and his research team at Carnegie Mellon University has identified that US students' inadequate knowledge of fractions and division is one of the major sources for this gap.
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How Students and Teachers Relate
How a teacher relates to his or her students has tremendous influence on a student’s learning experience. So Matthew G. Mandelbaum of Fordham University and PsySoEd Dynamics, LLC asked childhood and early-childhood educators about the approaches they use in their classrooms to solve problems and maintain motivation. He asked whether they would develop a new curriculum in an adventurous or a structured style, if they typically seek to develop deep relationships with students (relational approach), and if they pursued professional development opportunities (mastery). In general, he found that teachers who were adventurous were also more relational.
