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thenewenlightenmentage:
ScienceDaily (Oct. 7, 2012) — UCLA researchers have for the first time measured the activity of a brain region known to be involved in learning, memory and Alzheimer’s disease during sleep. They discovered that this part of the brain behaves as if it’s remembering something, even under anesthesia, a finding that counters conventional theories about memory consolidation during sleep.
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(via neurosciencestuff)
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Girls with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are significantly more likely to attempt suicide or injure themselves as young adults than girls who do not have ADHD, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
Young women diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as girls, particularly the type with early signs of impulsivity, were three to four times more likely to attempt suicide and two to three times more likely to report injuring themselves than comparable young women in a control group, according to the findings, published online in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
“ADHD can signal future psychological problems for girls as they are entering adulthood,” said the study’s lead author, Stephen Hinshaw, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “Our findings reinforce the idea that ADHD in girls is particularly severe and can have serious public health implications.”
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I have to ask, as it's been bugging me the entire time, but is your title a shout-out to the Evangelion Rebuild series? with the (not) thing. Apologies if this has been asked before or if it irritates you. xD; Love your blog, too.
Oh no, ask away! It’s actually an allusion to this painting. When I made this blog I thought, “The image addresses perception, that has to do with psychology somehow!” And that’s how the title came about.
Naming things is a pain in the ass
I'm surprised that "science" isn't a tag that is on the majority of your posts and/or reblogs~!
That’s because I use it mostly to distinguish between psychology posts and posts on other fields of science, not because I don’t think psychology is a science. :)
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via Invitation to Psychology
What do you do when you feel angry? Do you tend to brood and sulk, collecting your righteous complaints like acorns for the winter, or do you erupt, hurling your wrath upon anyone or anything at hand? Do you discuss your feelings when you have calmed down? Does “letting anger out” get rid of it for you, or does it only make it more intense?
The answers are crucial for how you get along with your family, neighbors, employers, and strangers. Critical thinkers can learn to think carefully about how and when to express anger, and make a calm decision on how to proceed. Chronic feelings of anger and an inability to control anger can be as emotionally devastating and unhealthy as chronic problems with depression or anxiety. Yet in contrast to much pop-psych advice, research shows that expressing anger does not always get it “out of your system”; often people feel worse, physically and mentally, after an angry confrontation. When people brood and ruminate about their anger, talk to others incessantly about how angry they are, or ventilate their feelings in hostile acts, their blood pressure shoots up, they often feel angrier, and they behave even more aggressively later than if they had just let their feelings of anger subside (Bushman et al., 2005; Tavris, 1989). Conversely, when people learn to control their tempers and express anger constructively, they usually feel better, not worse; calmer, not angrier.
When people are feeling angry, they have a choice of doing any number of things, some of which will be more beneficial than others. Some people sulk, expecting everyone else to read their minds, which is hardly a way to communicate clearly. Many post impulsive comments on blogs that have annoyed them or send nasty texts on the spur of the moment. Some scream abuses at their friends or family, or strike out physically. If a particular action soothes their feelings or gets the desired response from others, they are likely to acquire a habit. Soon that habit feels “natural,” as if it could never be changed. Some habits are better than others, though! Baking bread or going for a jog is fine, whereas many people justify their violent tempers by saying, “I couldn’t help myself.” But they can. If you have acquired an abusive or aggressive habit, the research offers practical suggestions for learning constructive ways of managing anger:
- Don’t sound off in the heat of anger; let bodily arousal cool down. Whether your arousal comes from background stresses such as heat, crowds, or loud noise or from conflict with another person, take time to relax. Time allows you to decide whether you are really angry or just tired and tense. This is the reason for the sage old advice to count to 10, count to 100, or sleep on it. Other cooling-off strategies include taking a time-out in the middle of an argument, meditating or relaxing, and calming yourself with a distracting activity.
- Don’t take it personally. If you feel that you have been insulted, check your perception for its accuracy. Could there be another reason for the behavior you find offensive? People who are quick to feel anger tend to interpret other people’s actions as intentional offenses. People who are slow to anger tend to give others the benefit of the doubt, and they are not as focused on their own injured pride. Empathy (“Poor guy, he’s feeling rotten”) is usually incompatible with anger, so practice seeing the situation from the other person’s perspective.
- Beware of road rage—yours and the other person’s. Driving increases everyone’s level of physiological arousal, but not everyone becomes a hotheaded driver. Some drivers make themselves angry by having vengeful and retaliatory thoughts about other drivers (who have the nerve to change lanes or want to park! Who dare to drive at the speed limit in a school zone!). Hotheaded drivers take more risks while driving (rapidly switching lanes in their impatience), behave more aggressively (swearing, giving other drivers the finger or cursing them), and have more accidents (Deffenbacher et al., 2003).
If you decide that expressing anger is appropriate, be sure you use the right verbal and nonverbal language to make yourself understood. Because cultures (and families) have different display rules, be sure the recipient of your anger understands what you are feeling and what complaint you are trying to convey—and whether or not the person thinks your anger is appropriate. For example, a study compared the use of anger by Asian-American and Anglo-American negotiators. Expressing anger was effective for the Anglo teams—it got more concessions from the other side—but was much less effective for the Asian negotiators (Adam, Shirako, & Maddux, 2010).
Think carefully about how to express anger so that you will get the results you want. What do you want your anger to accomplish? Do you just want to make the other person feel bad, or do you want the other person to understand your concerns and make amends? Shouting “You moron! How could you be so stupid!” might accomplish the former goal, but it’s not likely to get the person to apologize, let alone to change his or her behavior. If your goal is to improve a bad situation or achieve justice, learning how to express anger so the other person will listen is essential.
Of course, if you just want to blow off steam, go right ahead; but you risk becoming a hothead.
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ScienceDaily (Aug. 3, 2012) — New technology has led to the creation of virtual humans who can interact with therapists via a computer screen and realistically mimic the symptoms of a patient with clinical psychological disorders, according to new research presented at the American Psychological Association’s 120th Annual Convention.
“As this technology continues to improve, it will have a significant impact on how clinical training is conducted in psychology and medicine,” said psychologist and virtual reality technology expert Albert “Skip” Rizzo, PhD, who demonstrated recent advancements in virtual reality for use in psychology.
Virtual humans can now be highly interactive, artificially intelligent and capable of carrying on a conversation with real humans, according to Rizzo, a research scientist at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. “This has set the stage for the ‘birth’ of intelligent virtual humans to be used in clinical training settings,” he said.
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Self-Concept: Independent or Interdependent
via David G. Myers - Social Psychology
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Sometimes we need the right music to get ouf of bed in the morning, to get on with cleaning the house, to hype ourselves up. Soundtracks make movies more dramatic, funny, or scary. And some bittersweet songs about lost love even manage to make us cry.
Does music really influence our emotions? The answer lies in the brain:
- Happy music makes you happy because it activates the same cerebral areals as other stimuli that elicit positive feelings.
We knew that pleasant and unpleasant pictures cause different activity patterns in the brain (Davidson et al., 2000). An experiment used EEG data of students (Schmidt & Trainor, 2001) to reveal that “positive” and “negative” music induces the same asymmetrical brain activity.
- Ten students were asked to bring music to the laboratory that gave them goosebumps, which the subject group listened to in turns with neutral compositions (Blood & Zatorre, 2001). When listening to the goosebumps-inducing music, both heart rate and respiratory frequency quickened.
Moreover, their brain activity signaled pleasant emotional arousal. The more intense the goosebumps, the more active the brain areals in question.
What makes music happy or sad?
- One factor seems to be pace. In another experiment students listened to relatively quick and relatively slow pieces. Again, the brain activity was asymmetrical. Quicker music is generally happier than slow music. (Tsang et al., 2001)
It’s still a small mystery why music makes us feel things. Music uses neuronal emotion and reward mechanisms similar to those of food, sex, and drugs. This is remarkable, given that it is neither essential to biological survival or procreation, nor a pharmacological substance.
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ScienceDaily (Aug. 2, 2012)
Switching back and forth between different languages happens all the time in multilingual environments, and often in emotional situations. In a new article in the July issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientists Stephen Chen and Qing Zhou of the University of California, Berkeley and Morgan Kennedy of Bard College delve deeper into this linguistic phenomenon.
Drawing on research from psychology and linguistics, the researchers seek to better understand how using different languages to discuss and express emotions in a multilingual family might play an important role in children’s emotional development. They propose that the particular language parents choose to use when discussing and expressing emotion can have significant impacts on children’s emotional understanding, experience, and regulation.
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