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Americans Recognize ‘Past Presidents’ Who Never Were
A memory study suggests that a majority of Americans incorrectly think that Alexander Hamilton was a US president, and many believe the same about Benjamin Franklin, Hubert Humphrey, and John Calhoun.
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Faces of Black Children as Young as Five Evoke Negative Biases
A new study suggests that people are more likely to misidentify a toy as a weapon after seeing a Black face than a White face, even when the face in question is that of a five-year-old child. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Our findings suggest that, although young children are typically viewed as harmless and innocent, seeing faces of five-year-old Black boys appears to trigger thoughts of guns and violence,” said lead study author Andrew Todd, an assistant professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Iowa.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: The Economics of Losing a Loved One: Delayed Reward Discounting in Prolonged Grief Fiona Maccallum and George A. Bonanno Prolonged grief (PG) is a syndrome marked by intense and prolonged bereavement and is accompanied by significant impairment. Researchers still have much to learn about PG, including how it influences decision making. People who had lost a parent, partner, or sibling in the past 1 to 3 years were assessed for prolonged grief, life experiences, depression, and life orientation (whether they were more optimistic or pessimistic in their expectations).
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Early Poverty Disrupts Link Between Hunger and Eating
How much you eat when you’re not really hungry may depend on how well off your family was when you were a child, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the
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Seeing Exemplary Peer Work Can Undermine Student Performance
From academic honors to "employee of the month" awards, we are regularly exposed to and made aware of the exemplary performance of others. Many believe such recognition not only acknowledges the individual but also motivates others to strive toward greater achievement. But new research suggests that exposure to exceptional performance can sometimes have the opposite results, effectively discouraging people from higher-level performance.
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Imagining Positive Outcomes May Bring Pleasure Now But Pain Later
Positive fantasies about how future events will turn out can boost your mood in the here and now, but they may actually lead to increased depressive symptoms in the long run, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Our findings suggest that as pleasurable and helpful as positive fantasies are for depressive mood in the moment, they can be problematic and cumbersome over time,” says lead researcher Gabriele Oettingen of New York University.