November 2009
65 posts
7 tags
8 tags
Exercise Prepares Our Bodies for Stressful... →
For years doctors have recommended exercise to enhance our moods, but the reason it actually works has never been that clear. Thanks to a group of overworked rodents, we may be closer to finding out, and it’s pretty good news.
Photo by mhofstrand
Researchers at Princeton University recently conducted a study comparing sedentary rats with active ones. Both were dunked in cold water, which...
7 tags
Being a CEO Is No Cakewalk And Boards Need to Get... →
Released: 11/23/2009 10:00 AM EST Source: Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP)
Newswise — Succession planning should be an ongoing process for boards of directors, not a periodic activity.
When Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis unexpectedly announced in September he was stepping down at the end of the year, the BofA board had to accelerate its process in finding a...
5 tags
2 tags
12 tags
The Holiday Role You Play | Psychology Today →
Perhaps no other time of year is as highly anticipated, and secretly dreaded, as that festive family time known collectively as “the holidays.” The clash of fake gaiety and togetherness around Thanksgiving time plus Christmas’s unrealistic expectations of “perfection” can lead to a train wreck of emotions.
We cope the best we can. Both poles of our Jekyll-Hyde...
8 tags
Death, Taxes . . . and DNA? | Psychology Today →
There’s no way this scumbag didn’t do it. We’ve got three freaking people who heard them arguing in the apartment twenty minutes before they heard the screams and dialed 911. Now the lab tells me that that there’s only the girl’s blood on the knife, no DNA from this asshole … The door is wide open for him to argue that someone came in after he left and did the...
9 tags
7 tags
How the Navy Seals Increased Passing Rates |... →
It was 10 PM, pitch black and I was in the middle of the woods in North Carolina. My job was simple. I had to erect a 30 foot antennae that would be used to gather radio transmissions so our artillery platoon could conduct fire missions. I had been dropped off from a Humvee along with another soldier in another platoon. We were all alone. He had the same mission but had to set up his antennae...
6 tags
Black Friday Syndrome and Brain Imaging (Humorous)... →
As I write this it is approximately 12am (CST) on the friday after Thanksgiving, 2009, and we have ushered in one of the more unusual unofficial holidays in the United States: Black Friday. The day after Thanksgiving has become the starting point for shoppers to snatch up holiday gifts for loved ones at bargain prices, for retailers to recover losses for the year (or extend on profits), and for...
10 tags
The Chameleon Effect | PsyBlog →
Does mimicking other people’s body language really make them like us?
Self-help books, persuasion manuals and glossy magazine articles often advise that mimicking body language can increase how much others like us. But is it really true that mimicry causes others to like us, or is mimicry just a by-product of successful social interactions?
Although it had long been suspected that...
7 tags
Innovation: The psychology of Google Wave - tech -... →
Innovation is our regular column that highlights emerging technological ideas and where they may lead
Over the past week Google has been rolling out the first invitations to its latest service, a complex “real-time communication and collaboration” system dubbed Google Wave.
Instead of sending messages back and forth, users create web-page-like documents called waves that others can...
3 tags
Curiosities: Is it true that laughing is good for... →
researchnews:
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
5 tags
Working mothers perpetuating myth of 'the useless... →
studentloansforbeermoney:
“A scientific paper called The Female Breadwinner, to be published in the journal Sex Roles this week, details the feelings of 15,000 female career women.
The findings suggest the idea of men as slackers has been developed by women who feel “an overwhelming sense of guilt” at having a career rather than fulfilling their traditional gender role of wife and...
8 tags
How One Army Town Copes With Post- Traumatic... →
In retrospect, disneyland wasn’t an ideal family-vacation spot for Mark Waddell, a Navy SEAL commander whose valor in combat hid the fact that he was suffering from severe mental trauma. The noise of the careening rides, the shrieking kids—everything roused Waddell to a state of hypervigilance typical of his worst days in combat. When an actor dressed as Goofy stuck his long, doggy...
7 tags
Bronze is Beautiful, but Pale Can Be Pretty...
“Bronze is beautiful but pale can be pretty: The effects of appearance standards and mortality salience on sun-tanning outcomes”
By: Cox, Cathy R.; Cooper, Douglas P.; Vess, Matthew; Arndt, Jamie; Goldenberg, Jamie L.; Routledge, Clay
From Health Psychology, Vol. 27, Iss. 4
Objective: Using the terror management health model (J. L. Goldenberg & J. Arndt, 2008), the authors...
8 tags
Why Getting Revenge Isn't Worth It | Psychology... →
Recently, an editor at PT asked me to dig up some good juicy stories about revenge. Most of the ones I found dealt with how the scorned practiced retribution against their (ex) lovers’ bodily appendages à la Lorena Bobbit.
Reading about these unique crimes of passion got me thinking about my own style of revenge, which surprisingly, is NADA. But why? Is it because I’m a Leo—so...
11 tags
Political correctness and Ft. Hood killings -... →
Editor’s note: Tom Kenniff is a legal analyst and a founding partner of Raiser & Kenniff P.C. in New York, where he defends those accused of committing criminal offenses. He is a veteran of the war in Iraq, where he served as a commissioned officer in the Army Judge Advocate General Corps.
New York (CNN) — Just hours after the first reports of the tragedy at Fort Hood surfaced, a...
13 tags
Bob Sutton: Testosterone Levels, Top Dogs, and... →
My favorite behavioral science website, BPS Research Digest, posted a summary of an amazingly weird and rather troubling psychological experiment. The upshot is that people —- both men and women —- vary in testosterone levels and (no surprise), when people with high testosterone levels aren’t in leadership positions, “they can find it stressful and uncomfortable when...
5 tags
Therapy 32 times more cost effective at increasing... →
Research by the University of Warwick and the University of Manchester finds that psychological therapy could be 32 times more cost effective at making you happy than simply obtaining more money. The research has obvious implications for large compensation awards in law courts but also has wider implications for general public health. Chris Boyce of the University of Warwick and Alex Wood of the...
4 tags
Shifting Blame is Socially Contagious →
researchnews:
NEWSWISE
5 tags
How the brain filters out distracting thoughts to... →
researchnews:
SCIENCE DAILY
7 tags
PsychSplash » International Cultic Studies... →
Note: PsychSplash finds different psychology-related sites and this is one of them… just found it bizarre that there’s a whole association for studying cults. And it’s called “cultic studies.”
International Cultic Studies Association
http://www.icsahome.com/ 0
ICSA’s mission is to apply research and professional perspectives to the problems encountered by family...
5 tags
Depression as deadly as smoking, study finds... →
fuckyeahpsychology:
psychotherapy:
A study by researchers at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s College London has found that depression is as much of a risk factor for mortality as smoking.
Utilising a unique link between a survey of over 60,000 people and a comprehensive mortality database, the researchers found that over the four years...
5 tags
Celebrities with Bipolar Disorder →
k-troll:
iamsebastian:
thewayoftheworld:
Adam Ant (musician)
Ludwig van Beethoven (composer)
Napoleon Bonaparte (political leader)
Tim Burton (artist, director)
Lord Byron (poet)
Winston Churchill (politician)
Charles Dickens (author)
Robert Downey Jr. (actor)
Richardy Dreyfuss (actor)
Jimi Hendrix (musician)
Ernest Hemingway (writer)
Hermann Hesse (writer)
Edvard Munch (artist)
...
5 tags
Its GDP Is Depressed, but Argentina Leads World in... →
BUENOS AIRES — When celebrity psychoanalyst Gabriel Rolón picked up the phone, the man on the line said he was holding a loaded gun and was ready to blow his brains out.
Mr. Rolón was recently recounting the incident, which took place several years ago, to a rapt audience of his fans here in Argentina, the nation with more psychologists per capita than any other. Mr. Rolón said he told...
7 tags
The SIOP Exchange: 10 Reasons Your Team Hates You... →
Submitted by the SIOP Electronic Communications Committee
Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC recently published his list of the 10 reasons teams hate their leaders:
“10 Reasons Your Team Hates You:
10. You don’t prioritize. Everything is important. When you do this, you remove your team’s ability to say no to less important work and focus their efforts on critical tasks....
6 tags
The Gay Animal Kingdom : The Frontal Cortex →
Posted on: October 30, 2009 11:04 AM, by Jonah Lehrer
I still don’t have any additional details, but the initial newspaper report from the Jacksonville Journal-Courier is disturbing:
A Southwestern High School English teacher has been suspended after reports he had students in his classes to read an article about homsexuality in the animal kingdom.
Dan Delong of Carlinville...
7 tags
Fourth Down : The Frontal Cortex →
Posted on: November 17, 2009 5:09 PM, by Jonah Lehrer
Bill Belichick has never been the most popular coach in the NFL, but his Sunday night decision to go for it on 4th and 2 on his own 28 with two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter has even his fans crying foul. I bring up this football decision not because I’m interested in a debate - as a Pats fan, the last five minutes of that...
4 tags
5 tags
BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: Ten statisticians every... →
As psychology students past and present will be only too aware, statistics are a key part of every psychology undergrad course and they also appear in nearly every published journal article. And yet have we ever stopped to recognise the statisticians who have brought us these wonderful mathematical tools? As psychologistDaniel Wright puts it: “Statistical techniques are often taught as if...
5 tags
Coed college housing connected to frequent binge... →
Coed college housing connected to frequent binge drinking
Published: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 06:52 in Psychology & Sociology
A new study in the Journal of American College Health finds that students placed by their universities in coed housing are 2.5 times more likely to binge drink each week than students placed in all-male or all-female housing. More than 500 students from five...
16 tags
6 tags
Mind Hacks: Final destination, Golden Gate Bridge →
There’s a remarkable article on the world’s most popular suicide spot, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, in the latestAmerican Journal of Psychiatry.
The article has several case studies of people who have died from jumping from the bridge and some fascinating quotes from one of the few people who have survived their attempts.
It is full of curious snippets of information,...
5 tags
Today's children decide their school and career... →
Today’s children decide their school and career path early
Published: Sunday, November 15, 2009 - 08:14 in Psychology & Sociology
‘What is very striking,’ says Professor Croll, ‘is that for this generation there is absolutely no gender stereotyping in hopes for the future. Furthermore, what children say at the age of 11 about school participation after the age of 16...
4 tags
Bering in Mind: Are there asexuals among us? On... →
Gay people are often asked by the curious: When did you first realize you weregay?” In my case, I remember undressing my Superman doll—and being terribly disappointed at the result—as well as being motivated to befriend the more attractive boys in third grade. But hormonally speaking, it wasn’t until I was about fourteen that I first looked in the mirror and thought to myself, ah,...
7 tags
Kierkegaard on the Couch - Happy Days Blog -... →
All progress paves over some bit of knowledge or washes away some valuable practice. Within a few years, e-mail and Twitter moved the art of letter writing to the trash bin. And in an age when all psychic life is being understood in terms of neurotransmitters, the art of introspection has become passé. Galileos of the inner world, such as Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), have been packed off to the...
5 tags
Bering in Mind: Are there asexuals among us? On... →
Gay people are often asked by the curious: When did you first realize you were gay?” In my case, I remember undressing my Superman doll—and being terribly disappointed at the result—as well as being motivated to befriend the more attractive boys in third grade. But hormonally speaking, it wasn’t until I was about fourteen that I first looked in the mirror and thought to myself, ah,...
7 tags
Facebook 'enhances intelligence' but Twitter... →
infoneernet:
Playing video war games and solving Sudoku may have the same effect as keeping up to date with Facebook, according to Dr Tracy Alloway.
But text messaging, micro-blogging on ”Twitter” and watching YouTube were all likely to weaken ”working memory”.
Seen at The Telegraph
8 tags
Mind Hacks: Social networks of murder →
Social networks of murder: I’m just reading a long but gripping study that used social network analysisto look at murder as a social interaction between gangs in Chicago to understand how stable networks of retaliation are sustained over time.
However, I was struck by this bit in the introduction, which really highlights the social nature of murder:
But we know that murder is not in...
9 tags
The Personality Paradox : The Frontal Cortex →
Posted on: October 22, 2009 8:49 AM, by Jonah Lehrer
David Brooks has written yet another wonderful column on the mind. This time he explores the nagging gap between our intuitions about personality - we each express a particular set of character traits, which can be traced back to our early childhood - and the scientific facts, which suggest that the vague personality traits measured by the...
9 tags
The Psychology of Hasan: The Ft. Hood Shooter |... →
By JOHN M GROHOL PSYD November 9, 2009
I’ve held off in writing anything about the tragic Ft. Hood shooting, allowing some time for details to emerge and for emotions to settle. Random acts of violence always leave us all scratching our heads, but sometimes the violence seems so extreme, the act so irrational, one can’t help but turn and ask, “Why did he do it?”
Major Nidal Malik Hasan is...
5 tags
The Truth About Self-Deception | PsyBlog →
Can we pull the wool over our own eyes or do we see through our mind games?
In theory the one person we should never, ever, lie to is ourselves. Surely lying to ourselves is counter-productive? Like calmly and deliberately shooting yourself in the foot or taking a hot toasting fork and plunging it into your eye?
But look around and it’s not hard to spot the tell-tale symptoms of...
8 tags
Episode 92: Passion For Your Work is Overrated —... →
I have to admit that I LOVE when pop culture and everyday life meet psychology - Dan Gilbert’s book and the TV show “Dirty Jobs” meet up with one of the classic Industrial-Organizational Psychology models, Hackman and Oldham’s Job Characteristics Model. So even though this isn’t exactly a new post, I find it worthy of posting!
Episode 92: Passion For Your Work is...
4 tags
Are scientists getting dumber? →
From a news story in today’s issue of Science:
A new study finds little evidence for leaks in the U.S. pipeline for producing native-born scientists except for a steep drop in the percentage of the highest performing students taking science and engineering jobs. The findings suggest that the United States risks losing its economic competitiveness not because of a work force inadequately...
7 tags
“The study, led by economist Bentley Coffey of Clemson University in South...”
– Women with male names do better in legal careers: study (via lolconomy)
5 tags
9 tags
Women's Perfectionism and Workplace Ambition
therestlessexploration:
I read a lot about women in the workplace. The “Marci Alboher, Working the New Economy’s Blog” had a recent article debating whether women were less titled in the workplace because they were less ambitious. One of the commentators was saying that women are not less interested in success, but they are less interested in being recognized by others for their success. This...
6 tags
Titles of Research Articles in the Journal of...
simpleheart:
- The legibility of the telephone directory
- The moron as a war problem
- Mental tests of unemployed men
source: Work in the 21st Century: An Introduction to Industrial and Organizational Psychology by Frank J. Landy and Jeffrey M. Conte
4 tags
Positive Psychology News Daily » Relationships... →
“We must look for what is good in an organization before we move forward. Where the organization wants to be is based on higher moments of where they have been.” David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney
Schools are complex environments with many factors and relationships, as well as people with different values, purposes, and ways of making meaning.
The Appreciative Inquiry process, developed...
