Mom’s Affection (Would’ve) Helped
PsychCentral: Early Life Experiences Boost Adult Mental Health.
A new study suggests infants who receive strong affection from their mothers are well equipped to cope with life stressors as adults. Although the sample is small, the research is meaningful. Most prior studies have relied on recall; few have tracked participants from childhood to adult life, say the authors.
Anchoring Effect
New at YANSS, the Anchoring Effect:
The Misconception: You rationally analyze all factors before making a choice or determining value.
The Truth: Your first perception lingers in your mind, affecting later perceptions and decisions.
The Just World Fallacy
From the YANSS vaults, a look at the Just World Fallacy:
The Misconception: People who are losing at the game of life must have done something to deserve it.
The Truth: The benefactors of good fortune often did nothing to deserve it, and bad people often get away with their actions without consequences.
Stereotypes v. Learning
PsychCentral: Harmful Stereotypes Hinder Learning and Performance.
Through a series of experiments involving Chinese characters and color judgment tasks, the researchers were able to show that actual learning had not occurred in the group of women who had been reminded of the negative stereotypes involving women’s math and visual processing ability.
Dream Writing
NYT: Following a Script to Escape a Nightmare.
In recent years, nightmares have increasingly been viewed as a distinct disorder, and researchers have produced a growing body of empirical evidence that this kind of cognitive therapy can help reduce their frequency and intensity, or even eliminate them.
The treatments are controversial. Some therapists, particularly Jungian analysts, take issue with changing nightmares’ content, arguing that dreams send crucial messages to the waking mind.
Adolescence and Anger
What to expect when you were expecting a dozen-plus years ago: Adolescence and Anger.
Parents can get angry in their frustrating fight for influence, adolescents can get angry in their frustrating fight for freedom. However,the battle is finally lost and won as the new generation defeats the old.
Phone Therapy
The Los Angeles Times looks at phone therapy (it works).
The therapist-patient relationship is crucial to people battling depression, addiction, weight gain and diabetes. But that relationship might not always have to be in person to be effective…
The New, New Dating
NYT: The New Dating Tools: A Card and a Wink
Move over, Match.com. This is the next generation of online dating. Unlike traditional dating sites where members spend hours on computers writing autobiographies and scrutinizing photographs, a raft of newfangled dating tools are striving to better bridge the gap between online and real-world romance.
Breaking Up
ScienceDaily: Anguish of romantic rejection may be linked to stimulation of areas of brain related to motivation, reward and addiction.
The study…helps to explain “why feelings and behaviors related to romantic rejection are difficult to control” and why extreme behaviors associated with romantic rejection such as stalking, homicide, suicide, and clinical depression occur in cultures all over the world, the researchers wrote.
Brush Right!
Not therapy: 10 Toothbrushing Mistakes (WebMD). But I just had a cavity filled.
Toothbrushing Mistake No. 1: Not Using the Right Toothbrush
Consider the size of your mouth when picking a toothbrush, says Richard H. Price, DMD, the consumer advisor for the American Dental Association. “If you are straining to open wide enough to let the brush in, the brush is probably too big,” he says…
Nine more where that come from.