A longitudinal study of more than 2,500 low-income white, African-American and Mexican-American mothers and their children found that spanking at age 1 leads to more aggressive behaviors at age 2 and less sophisticated cognitive development at age 3. In contrast, researchers found that verbal punishment alone didn't affect children's aggression or their cognitive development. Interestingly, when verbal punishment was accompanied by emotional support from moms, children performed better on cognitive ability tests. [...more]
While most Americans think climate change is an important issue, they don't see it as an immediate threat, so getting people to "go green" requires policymakers, scientists and marketers to look at psychological barriers to change and what leads people to action, according to a task force of the American Psychological Association. [...more]
Academics meeting in Bristol for Britain's first conference on the psychology of climate change argued that the greatest obstacles to action are not technical, economic or political — they are the denial strategies that we adopt to protect ourselves from unwelcome information. [...more]
Just seeing a salad on the menu seems to push some consumers to make a less healthy meal choice, according a Duke University researcher.
It's an effect called "vicarious goal fulfillment," in which a person can feel a goal has been met if they have taken some small action, like considering the salad without ordering it, said Gavan Fitzsimons, professor of marketing and psychology at Duke's Fuqua School of Business, who led the research.
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“The pursuit of happiness.” It’s so American that it’s in our Declaration of Independence, where it’s listed alongside life and liberty as an inalienable right.
But how successful have we been in that pursuit? And now that the global finance system is imploding, how likely is it that we’ll be happy in the coming months and years?
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Modern technology increasingly is encroaching into human connections with the natural world and University of Washington psychologists believe this intrusion may emerge as one of the central psychological problems of our times. [...more]
Can money make us happy if we spend it on the right purchases? A new psychology study suggests that buying life experiences rather than material possessions leads to greater happiness for both the consumer and those around them [...more]
Exposure to more television and other electronic media during the teenage years appears to be associated with developing depression symptoms in young adulthood, especially among men, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. [...more]
Materialistic people tend to form strong connections to particular product brands when their level of anxiety about death is high, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. [...more]
Armies train by marching in step. Religions around the world incorporate many forms of singing and chanting into their rituals. Citizens sing the National Anthem before sporting events. Why do we participate in these various synchronized activities? A new study, published in the January issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that when people engage in synchronous activity together, they become more likely to cooperate with other group members. [...more]
