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1st World Conference on Personality
The Personality Psychology Foundation will hold the 1st World Conference on Personality March 19-23, 2013 in Stellenbosch, South Africa. For more information visit: http://www.perpsy.org/ Abstract submissions (symposia, papers, posters) are now open!! For the first time, this conference will bring together personality psychologists and psychologists with an interest in personality from the various regions of the world, to fully display the different perspectives on personality as pursued in different cultures, to stimulate further cooperation across the cultural borders, and to facilitate the commencement of new research-lines in the field.
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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.
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Facebook Users: Ruminating or Savoring?
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Sara M. Locatelli of the Department of Veterans Affairs and Loyola University, Chicago present her poster session research on “Facebook Use, Rumination, Savoring, and Personality: Influence on Health and Life Satisfaction.” Locatelli and her coauthors examined Facebook use among college students — specifically status updates — to look for links among Facebook use, rumination, savoring, and specific health outcomes. They found a connection between Facebook use and rumination but no link between Facebook use and savoring.
