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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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Clinical Psychological Science – A New Journal
The Association for Psychological Science is pleased to announce the launch of Clinical Psychological Science (CPS), a unique new journal in scope and mission. Under Founding Editor Alan E. Kazdin, Yale University, CPS will present cutting-edge work from psychological science, broadly conceived, as well as from the full range of related disciplines (e.g., genetics, neuroscience, psychiatry, public health) that contribute to clinical study. CPS's emphasis on integrating diverse scientific perspectives and on boundary-crossing research distinguishes it from traditional journals and places it at the forefront of an exciting new era in clinical science.
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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.
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Online Dating: A Critical Analysis From the Perspective of Psychological Science
Read the Full Text Many of us enter the dating pool looking for that special someone, but finding a romantic partner can be difficult. With the rise of the digital age, it is no surprise that people have flocked to the Internet as a way to take control of their dating lives and find their “soul-mate.” But is online dating essentially different than conventional dating, and does it promote better romantic outcomes? In this new report, Eli J. Finkel (Northwestern University), Paul W. Eastwick (Texas A & M University), Benjamin R. Karney (UCLA), Harry T.
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Social Pain Hurts Too
Most doctors don’t recommend Tylenol for a broken heart or a supportive friend for a headache. But an article published by Janet Taylor Spence Award recipient Naomi I. Eisenberger in the February 2012 edition of Current Directions in Psychological Science shows there is a growing body of evidence that social pain shares some of the neural circuitry that underlies physical pain. Eisenberg explains that physical pain has two components — sensory and affective — each of which is associated with different parts of the brain.
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Romantic Jealousy and Self-Esteem
In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the 23rd APS Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Jessica L. Bowler from Pitzer College present her poster session research on “Self-Esteem and Components of Romantic Jealousy.” Bowler distributed a survey that described four scenarios designed to induce romantic jealousy. Then she analyzed participants’ responses in relation to self-esteem. She found that participants with high self-esteem were less likely to be jealous after reading the scenarios. Participants with low self-esteem were likely to become more insecure, more anxious, more distressed, and less trusting in response to hypothetical infidelity situations.
