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Placebo Power
APS Fellow and Charter Member Irving Kirsch, associate director of the Placebo Studies Program at Harvard Medical School, says the difference between the effect of a placebo and the effect of an antidepressant is minimal for most people. "People get better when they take the drug, but it's not the chemical ingredients of the drugs that are making them better," Kirsch told Lesley Stael in a 60 Minutes interview, "it's largely the placebo effect." The "placebo effect" may not be all in your head says Kirsch in the interview below: Kirsch, I., Deacon, B.J., Huedo-Medina, T.B., Scoboria, A., Moore, T.J., & Johnson, B.T. (2008).
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Perfectionism, Goal Appraisals, and Distress in Students
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling in Washington, DC. Watch. Watch Gordon L. Flett from York University, Canada and Taryn Nepon of York University, Canada present their research at the 23rd APS Annual Convention in Washington, DC. This study examined perfectionism, goal cognitions, and distress in 95 students. Participants completed the Goal Systems Assessment Battery, along with measures of perfectionism, anxiety, and depression. Socially prescribed perfectionism and perfectionistic thoughts were associated with goal-related self-criticism and negative arousal. Self-oriented perfectionism predicted self-criticism and negative arousal for academic goals.
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Where Learning STEMs From
The need for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) professionals has become critical in the United States. A recent Washington Post article stated there is a shortage of qualified U.S. workers needed to fill openings for high-paying STEM jobs. And this trend, says the Post, “is primarily caused by the lack of women and other minorities pursuing careers in the STEM fields.” APS President Douglas Medin (Northwestern University) and former student Megan Bang (University of Washington) are helping tackle this issue by investigating current approaches to STEM education and determining how culture may affect the way people learn.
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Stopping Temper Tantrums Before They Start
Shoving, punching, and belligerent insults aren’t just for ruffians at biker bars and soccer games. At some point or another, most children throw temper tantrums. But changing the child’s behavior is not the key to stopping these fits — it’s the parents who have to change. “Most of the parenting methods, most of the parenting books, most of the advice is not based on research, and very much of it violates what we actually know,” said APS Fellow Alan Kazdin in this interview with the Today Show. Kazdin, who directs the Yale Parenting Center, said that punishing bad behavior won’t stop tantrums. Instead, parents should be praising good behavior and ignoring the bad.
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Request for Information: Suicide Prevention Research
A Call to Identify Key Methodological Roadblocks and Propose New Paradigms in Suicide Prevention Research The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) announce a newly released Request for Information (RFI): A Call to Identify Key Methodological Roadblocks and Propose New Paradigms in Suicide Prevention Research. The RFI seeks input to identify the types of research tools needed to support rapid advancement in suicide prevention research.
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Sleep, Social Cues, and Dissociative Disorders
There’s a good chance that most of your knowledge about dissociative identity disorder (DID) — formerly known as multiple personality disorder — comes from films like Sybil (1976) or The Three Faces of Eve (1957). Sybil and Eve both develop multiple, distinct personalities in order to cope with psychologically traumatic events from their childhoods. But current research has shown that this popular “posttraumatic model” is not accurate. DID may actually arise due to a combination of factors, such as cues from therapists, a fantasy-prone personality, and even irregular sleep patterns.
