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Dating in the Digital Age
The report card is in, and the online dating industry won’t be putting this one on the fridge. A new scientific report concludes that although online dating offers users some very real benefits, it falls far short of its potential. Unheard of just twenty years ago, online dating is now a billion dollar industry and one of the most common ways for singles to meet potential partners. Many websites claim that they can help you find your “soulmate.” But do these online dating services live up to all the hype?
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NIH Funding Opportunity: Modeling Social Behavior
Deadline April 3, 2012, by 5:00 PM local time of applicant organization. Announcing a funding opportunity from the NIH, a research project grant on Modeling Social Behavior. This grant, issued by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), solicits applications for developing and testing innovative theories and computational, mathematical, or engineering approaches to deepen our understanding of complex social behavior. This research will examine phenomena at multiple scales to address the emergence of collective behaviors that arise from individual elements or parts of a system working together.
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Science on Love (and Hate, Too) at the APS Convention
Although Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, psychological scientists study love all year round — and it’s not always pretty. In this video, Douglas T. Kenrick discusses his book Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life. Plan to see Kenrick and others present research on love, sex, online dating, and more at the 24th APS Annual Convention in Chicago. Passionate Love: Looking Back and Looking Ahead Elaine Hatfield will talk about how research on passionate love and sexual desire has evolved over the last 50 years. Hatfield will be introduced by Ellen Berscheid, with whom she will share the 2012 APS William James Fellow Award.
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Oxytocin’s (not so) Better Half
Feeling all warm and fuzzy? Chalk it up to oxytocin, the touchy-feely hormone that allows us to trust, bond, and even fall in love. Despite nicknames such as “the moral molecule,” “love potion,” and “liquid trust,” this feel-good chemical may have a surprising dark side. According to research published in the August 2011 issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, the role of oxytocin is not so simple. Andrew Kemp and Adam Guastella, of the University of Sydney, say the “cuddle hormone” may play a role in negative social emotions.
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Even Babies Know What's Fair
At a playground, it’s not uncommon to hear the refrain, “That’s not fair!” It seems that young children worry a lot about fairness, but psychological scientists have typically assumed that kids don’t start to understand morality until they reach their preschool years. New research, however, on 19- to 21-month-olds has indicated that sensitivity to fairness might begin a lot earlier. and her colleagues performed two experiments designed to test infants’ sense of fairness. The first experiment involved a female experimenter giving toy ducks, cookies, or toy cars to giraffe puppets. In one trial, the experimenter distributed the goodies equally between the two puppets.
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Science on Swearing
Timothy Jay knows enough about curse words to make any seven-year-old jealous. The Boston Globe has called him the “Doctor of dirty words,” and he frequently appears in news stories — like this one from the Today Show — to discuss swearing. Even though swearing is frowned upon, research that Jay published in Perspectives on Psychological Science shows that profane language is everywhere, and it has an important purpose. Taboo words pack a lot of emotion, and this allows them to achieve certain goals, such as conveying frustration or humor, more easily than non-taboo words.
