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Do You Have the Luck Factor?
Why do some people lead happy successful lives while other face repeated failure and sadness? Why do some find their perfect partner whilst others stagger from one broken relationship to the next? What enables some people to have successful careers whilst others find themselves trapped in jobs they detest? Is luck only for the Irish or is there anything “unlucky people” can do anything to improve their luck and their lives? Ten years ago, Professor Richard Wiseman decided to search for the elusive luck factor by investigating the actual beliefs and experiences of lucky and unlucky people.
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How a Helping Hand Can Slow You
It’s great to know your partner will help you pursue your goals, right? Maybe not. According to a new study published in Psychological Science, having a helpful partner can actually undermine your motivation to work towards those goals. This “self-regulatory outsourcing” phenomenon involves unconsciously relying on someone else to move your goals forward and, as a result, reducing your own efforts to reach those goals. In the authors’ first experiment, volunteers who focused on a way their partners helped them reach health and fitness goals planned to devote less effort to these goals than a control group.
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Vote – ‘Just Do It!’
Who would have thought that exercising and voting were related to each other? A recent study published in Psychological Science found a link between people’s physical activity and their political activity. Researchers ranked each state for physical activity based on various population databases on exercise, diabetes, obesity, etc and found that people who live in more active states are also more likely to vote.
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Which to Use? ‘Was Doing’ or ‘Did’
Verb tense is more important than you may think, especially in how you form or perceive intention in a narrative. In recent research studied in Psychological Science, William Hart of the University of Alabama states that “when you describe somebody’s actions in terms of what they’re ‘doing,’ that action is way more vivid in [a reader's] mind.” Subsequently, when action is imagined vividly, greater intention is associated with it. Hart and Dolores Albarracín of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign sought to apply these findings to a situation where this mental bias could have a grave impact – a court case.
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Are You a Video Game Master or Addict?
APS Member Douglas Gentile, who runs the Media Research Laboratory at Iowa State University is interviewed via Skype by Fox News. Gentile discusses video game habits among youth and if their behavior patterns follow that of an addiction. Read the full story: Fox Excessive gaming linked to depression and anxiety in kids: MyFoxBOSTON.com
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Push It Back
When an alcoholic sees a drink, it’s hard to resist the impulsive response to approach it. Turning that impulse to grab it into an impulse to avoid it may help. A study published in Psychological Science found that a new cognitive-bias modification (CBM) treatment involving approach-avoidance tasks may help alcoholics stay abstinent from drinking. Alcoholic volunteers were trained to push away pictures of alcoholic drinks. When tested a week later, their approach bias for alcohol had changed to avoidance bias, compared to the control group that showed no such changes.
