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Category: Psychology

What we gain by recognizing the role of chance in life

What we gain by recognizing the role of chance in life

Mark R Rank writes: Your luck, they say, can turn around. All you need to do is work a little harder. As a saying often attributed to the Roman philosopher Seneca goes: ‘Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.’ A similar proverb is dated to the 16th century: ‘Diligence is the mother of good luck.’ And even the French chemist Louis Pasteur echoed the idea when he declared in 1854 that ‘chance only favours the mind which is prepared’….

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Gratitude robustly predicts reduced loneliness, comprehensive study shows

Gratitude robustly predicts reduced loneliness, comprehensive study shows

PsyPost reports: A recent study published in the journal Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being has provided new insights into the relationship between gratitude and loneliness. The meta-analysis, which synthesized data from 26 studies, found a moderate inverse association between gratitude and loneliness. In other words, individuals who tend to feel more gratitude also tend to experience less loneliness. Loneliness is a pervasive and distressing emotional experience that can lead to a host of negative outcomes, including depression, cardiovascular problems, and…

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Why do Republicans stick with Trump? New study explores the role of white nationalism

Why do Republicans stick with Trump? New study explores the role of white nationalism

PsyPost reports: A new study explores why many Americans, particularly Republican voters, continue to support former President Donald Trump despite serious charges against him. Researchers found that white nationalism and political views play crucial roles in shaping public attitudes towards these charges. The study, published in The British Journal of Criminology, sheds light on the interplay between racial attitudes and political allegiances in contemporary America. The attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, by Trump supporters resulted in…

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Trump and social media have normalized public expressions of anger

Trump and social media have normalized public expressions of anger

The Observer reports: Last week a video showing 60-year-old Peter Abbott screaming abuse at TV producer Samantha Isaacs gained a viral audience, after Abbott was found guilty at Poole magistrates court of “using threatening words or behaviour to cause alarm, distress or fear of violence”. In the phone-filmed video, Abbott is seen snarling and shouting as he presses his face up against Isaacs’ car window. He looks as if he’s channelling the Harry Enfield character Angry Frank, so cartoonishly aggressive…

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Living with the enduring pain of postcolonial trauma

Living with the enduring pain of postcolonial trauma

Farah Abdessamad writes: In 1952, the 27-year-old Frantz Fanon had just published his first book, Black Skin, White Masks, his controversial and rejected doctoral thesis on the effects of racism on health. Fanon had been interning at Saint-Alban hospital in southern France when he soon noticed that medical personnel often overlooked and minimised the concern of North African patients. At that time, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia (where my father was born) were either French colonies or protectorates, and these patients…

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Startling study finds Americans struggle to differentiate facts from political opinions

Startling study finds Americans struggle to differentiate facts from political opinions

PsyPost reports: In the digital era, navigating the relentless surge of political information has become a daily challenge for Americans. Yet, a recent study spearheaded by scholars from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign reveals a concerning trend: many Americans find it difficult to differentiate between statements of fact and statements of opinion. This struggle poses significant implications for civic discourse and the ability to sift through political information effectively. The findings have been published by the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation…

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We aren’t the only apes who can playfully tease each other, study finds

We aren’t the only apes who can playfully tease each other, study finds

Spontaneous playful teasing in four great ape species: https://t.co/MhRhkoFPOs @RossanoFederico @IsabelleLaumer @ScienceSquil #ProcB #ethology pic.twitter.com/pzuMbBdTGf — Royal Society Publishing (@RSocPublishing) March 11, 2024 Mongabay reports: Being silly and indulging in humor may sound easy, but our brains need to do a lot of heavy lifting to pull it off. Landing a joke requires recognizing what’s socially acceptable, being spontaneous, predicting how others may react, and playfully violating some social expectations. Until now, research on the complex cognitive abilities that underpin…

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Our brains take rhythmic snapshots of the world as we walk – and we never knew

Our brains take rhythmic snapshots of the world as we walk – and we never knew

Blazej Lyjak/Shutterstock By Matthew Davidson, University of Sydney For decades, psychology departments around the world have studied human behaviour in darkened laboratories that restrict natural movement. Our new study, published today in Nature Communications, challenges the wisdom of this approach. With the help of virtual reality (VR), we have revealed previously hidden aspects of perception that happen during a simple everyday action – walking. We found the rhythmic movement of walking changes how sensitive we are to the surrounding environment….

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‘Collective mind’ bridges societal divides − psychology research explores how watching the same thing can bring people together

‘Collective mind’ bridges societal divides − psychology research explores how watching the same thing can bring people together

Paying attention to the same thing strengthens bonds between observers. Carlos David Gomez/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA By Garriy Shteynberg, University of Tennessee Only about 1 in 4 Americans said that they had trust in the nation’s institutions in 2023 – with big business (1 in 7), television news (1 in 7) and Congress (1 in 12) scraping the very bottom. While institutional trust is decreasing, political polarization is increasing. The majority of Republicans (72%) and Democrats (64%) think of each…

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Online images may be turning back the clock on gender bias, research finds

Online images may be turning back the clock on gender bias, research finds

Berkeley Haas: A paper just published in the journal Nature finds that online images show stronger gender biases than online texts. Researchers also found that bias is more psychologically potent in visual form than in writing. A picture is worth a thousand words, as the saying goes, and research has shown that the human brain does indeed better retain information from images than from text. These days, we are taking in more visual content than ever as we peruse picture-packed…

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Study finds our brains are ‘programmed’ to learn more from people we like

Study finds our brains are ‘programmed’ to learn more from people we like

Lund University: Our brains are “programmed” to learn more from people we like—and less from those we dislike. This has been shown by researchers in cognitive neuroscience in a series of experiments. Their findings are published in Communications Psychology. Memory serves a vital function, enabling us to learn from new experiences and update existing knowledge. We learn both from individual experiences and from connecting them to draw new conclusions about the world. This way, we can make inferences about things…

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Expressive responding: Political partisanship can lead to willful disregard for facts, study suggests

Expressive responding: Political partisanship can lead to willful disregard for facts, study suggests

PsyPost reports: Have you ever wondered if people really believe the controversial statements they make, especially in today’s politically charged environment? A recent study sheds light on this question, revealing that political affiliation may influence how people respond to factual questions, not necessarily reflecting their true beliefs but rather their allegiance to a political group. This phenomenon, known as “expressive responding,” was the focus of a recent replication study aimed at understanding how partisanship affects perceptions of truth in the…

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Study of Indigenous and local communities finds happiness doesn’t cost much

Study of Indigenous and local communities finds happiness doesn’t cost much

Autonomous University of Barcelona: Many Indigenous peoples and local communities around the world are leading very satisfying lives despite having very little money. This is the conclusion of a study by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), which shows that many societies with very low monetary income have remarkably high levels of life satisfaction, comparable to those in wealthy countries. Economic growth is often prescribed as a sure way of increasing the…

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U.S. culture is an incubator of ‘extrinsic values’. Nobody embodies them like Donald Trump

U.S. culture is an incubator of ‘extrinsic values’. Nobody embodies them like Donald Trump

George Monbiot writes: Many explanations are proposed for the continued rise of Donald Trump, and the steadfastness of his support, even as the outrages and criminal charges pile up. Some of these explanations are powerful. But there is one I have seen mentioned nowhere, which could, I believe, be the most important: Trump is king of the extrinsics. Some psychologists believe our values tend to cluster around certain poles, described as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. People with a strong set of intrinsic…

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What pigeons teach us about love

What pigeons teach us about love

Brandon Keim writes: Last spring I came to know a pair of pigeons. I’d been putting out neighborly sunflower seeds for them and my local Brooklyn house sparrows; typically I left them undisturbed while feeding, but every so often I’d want to water my plants or lie in the sun. This would scatter the flock—all, that is, except for these two. One, presumably male, was a strapping specimen of pigeonhood, big and crisp-feathered in an amiably martial way. The other,…

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Gut microbes may play role in social anxiety disorder, say researchers

Gut microbes may play role in social anxiety disorder, say researchers

The Guardian reports: While some people might relish the prospect of a new year party, for others socialising can trigger feelings of fear, anxiety and distress. Now researchers say microbes in the gut may play a role in causing social anxiety disorder, opening up fresh possibilities for therapies. Scientists have previously found the gut microbiome – the collection of bacteria and other organisms that live in the gastrointestinal system – differs for people who have social anxiety disorder (SAD) compared…

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