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Early Intervention Reduces Aggressive Behavior in Adulthood
An educational intervention program for children between kindergarten and 10th grade, known as Fast Track, reduces aggressive behavior later in life, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research, led by psychological scientist Justin Carré of Nipissing University in Ontario, Canada, indicates that dampened testosterone levels in response to social threats may account for the intervention’s success in reducing aggression.
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Can Gratitude Reduce Costly Impatience?
The human mind tends to devalue future rewards compared to immediate ones -- a phenomenon that often leads to favoring immediate gratification over long-term wellbeing. As a consequence, patience has long been recognized to be a virtue. And indeed, the inability to resist temptation underlies a host of problems ranging from credit card debt and inadequate savings to unhealthy eating and drug addiction. The prevailing view for reducing costly impatience has emphasized the use of willpower. That is, emotions are to be tamped down in order to avoid irrational impulses for immediate gain.
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Persons With Drug Addictions Who Live in the Moment May Benefit Most From Certain Treatments
Drug-dependent people who least take the future into account may, paradoxically, be the ones to benefit the most from certain treatments, a clinical study suggests.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Beyond Gist: Strategic and Incremental Information Accumulation for Scene Categorization George L. Malcolm, Antje Nuthmann, and Philippe G. Schyns Scene categorization is generally thought of as a perceptually driven process, but in this study, the authors examined whether hierarchical categorization may be driven by both top-down and bottom-up processes. The authors examined the processes involved in categorizing scenes at different hierarchical levels by recording participants' eye movements as they categorized scenes at the basic or subordinate level.
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The Unconscious Mind Can Detect a Liar — Even When the Conscious Mind Fails
When it comes to detecting deceit, your automatic associations may be more accurate than conscious thought in pegging truth-tellers and liars, according to findings from a psychological study.
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Social Feedback Loop Aids Language Development
Verbal interactions between parents and children create a social feedback loop important for language development, according to research forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. That loop appears to be experienced less frequently and is diminished in strength in interactions with autistic children. “This loop likely has cascading impacts over the course of a child’s development,” says psychological scientist and study author Anne S. Warlaumont of the University of California, Merced.