Did You Know

August 22nd, 2010
... there is a new MS program in Psychology at Arizona State University located in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. The program is research oriented and is most appropriate for students who wish to pursue a research-based or applied career in psychology or related fields.

August 15th, 2010
... a new professional society has formed - Society for Clinical and Social Psychology (SCSP) - which intersects the field of social and clinical psychology. Membership includes subscription to journal, newsletter, updates, and opportunity for collaboration.

August 8th, 2010
... a recent informal poll of graduate students in social psychology found that 77.8% reported the highest priority over summer is manuscript writing. In the Graduate Student Section of SPSP - Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the most recent edition of the newsletter, FORUM, has an article about "Tips and Strategies for Staying Productive over Summer!" which provides some useful tips and advice from fellow graduate students about how to approach summer in the most productive way possible.

August 1st, 2010
... robots may soon teach your class. A recent New York Times article discusses how researchers are developing highly programmed machines that can engage people and teach them simple skills, and that "Researchers say the pace of innovation is such that these machines should begin to learn as they teach, becoming the sort of infinitely patient, highly informed instructors that would be effective in subjects like foreign language or in repetitive therapies used to treat developmental problems like autism."

July 25th, 2010
... are informed citizens better citizens? In recent research reported in Boston, political scientists found that new facts do not necessarily change people opinions. People who are politically partisan sometimes even strengthen their beliefs in the face of new facts that counter their strongly held stances.

July 18th, 2010
... Is the Science in Social/Behavioral Science Useless? That is the title of a forthcoming article by Thomas Scheff. See his website, article #76, for his upcoming article in Contemporary Sociology in which he discusses the misuse of statistics in the social and behavioral sciences, including the debate between significance and effect sizes.

July 11th, 2010
... the Fulbright Scholar Program for US Faculty and Professionals for 2011-2012 is now open. The Fulbright Scholar Program offers 20 awards in teaching, research or combined teaching/research in psychology, including two Fulbright Distinguished Chairs. Even better, faculty and professionals in psychology also can apply for one of the 175 “All Discipline” awards open to all fields. For more information, visit www.cies.org/Webinar.

July 4th, 2010
... there may be an overlap in the brain for physical and social pain. In a recent article in Psychological Science entitled, "Acetaminophen Reduces Social Pain: Behavioral and Neural Evidence", participants taking acetaminophen for 3 weeks reported a decrease in daily hurt feelings compared to the placebo group. Acetaminophen is designed for treating physical aches and pains, but maybe it also treats social ones.

June 27th, 2010
... money increases your life satisfaction but not happiness. According to a new research reported in the Washington Post, a survey of more than 136,000 people in 132 countries found that day-to-day positive feelings of happiness were associated with having friends and family, feeling in control, and feeling respected.

June 20th, 2010
... money may decrease your ability to savor everyday experiences. In a recent article entitled, "Money Giveth, Money Taketh Away: The Dual Effect of Wealth on Happiness", participants manipulated to feel rich (compared to feeling poor) reported a lower ability to savor positive emotions and exhibited less enjoyment of life's everyday experiences.

April 18th, 2010
... your happiness level decreases from age 18 to 50, and then your happiness level increases until age 85, at which point you have more happiness than where you started at age 18, according to a research study published online May 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read more in this New York Times article about which factors make people happy based upon age-related changes.

April 11th, 2010
is there a psychology behind taxes? With tax day almost upon us, Bill Congdon of the Brookings Institution was interviewed about his study of the behavioral patterns behind taxes in which he describes examples of irrational economic behavior and smart consumer behavior when it comes to taxes and refunds.

April 4th, 2010
... merely thinking about fast food can induce impatient behaviors and choices outside of the eating domain. In a recent article in Psychological Science by Zhong and DeVoe, researchers found that "found that mere exposure to fast-food symbols reduced people’s willingness to save and led them to prefer immediate gain over greater future return, ultimately harming their economic interest."

March 28th, 2010
... the 2010 Mind & Life Summer Research Institute will take place in Garrison, New York, June 14-20. The theme of the Summer Research Institute is Human Development, Education and Contemplative Practice. The purpose is to advance collaborative research among developmental, neuroscientists, and educational researchers and practitioners.

March 21st, 2010
... the Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab at Harvard University is seeking to hire one or two full-time research assistants to begin in Summer or Fall 2010. These positions are ideal for recent college graduates or individuals looking to re-train in psychology/cognitive neuroscience.

March 14th, 2010
... the New England Psychological Association is hosting a conference in October 2010 at St Michaels College Colchester Vermont, and the proposals are due June 2, 2010. The NEPA conference also has a companion conference, New England Conference for Teachers of Psychology, held the first day of the NEPA conference.

March 7th, 2010
... Global Pulse 2010 is a 3-day, online collaboration event, that will bring together individual socially-engaged participants and organizations from around the world. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is sponsoring the Global Pulse 2010, in partnership with the Departments of State, Education, Commerce, and Health and Human Services. Global Pulse 2010 is an online "virtual" event. Registration is FREE and participants can join from any computer with internet access. The event will be live, over the span of 3 days from March 29th to March 31st.

February 28th, 2010
... Professor Jack Dovidio’s Yale Intergroup Relations Lab (YIRL) is accepting applications for volunteer research assistants for the summer of 2010. Applicants should be available for at least 8 weeks, mid-June - August. The ideal candidate is a motivated undergraduate or recent graduate with a keen interest in social psychology. To learn more about our lab, please visit our website. Interns work approximately 20-30 hours a week, which includes data collection, analysis, study design, and lab meetings.

February 21st, 2010
... the APA Science Directorate is pleased to sponsor its annual travel award competition for graduate students of psychology who will present research at the APA Convention. This year’s Convention will be held August 12-15, 2010, in San Diego, California. Graduate students who are the first author of a poster or talk are eligible to apply for one of this year’s grants of $300 each. The deadline for applications to arrive at APA is April 1, 2010.

February 14th, 2010
... "Smart men are less likely than dumb ones to cheat on their partners, according to a British study that was reported in the Daily Telegraph." From this article you can read how the researchers analyzed two large U.S. surveys that looked at the IQs and social attitudes of thousands of adults and adolescents. The finding was that "more intelligent men are more likely to value monogamy and sexual exclusivity than less intelligent men.”

February 7th, 2010
... the Society for the History of Psychology now has a new, permanent website that will allow members to find the latest information on the history of psychology community. The society is an international organization of scholars, teachers, and members whose interests and scholarship are concerned with understanding the historical events and important people who have shaped the development of psychological thought and practice.

January 31st, 2010
... there is a website about Eigenfactors which is a measure of the overall value provided by all of the articles published in a given journal in a year. The website also maps the structure of academic research, including interactive maping of academic fields and information about why Eigenfactors are useful for determining journal impact.

January 24th, 2010
... there is a new trial skills journal called the Jury Expert published by the American Society of Trial Consultants that features social sciences research articles by academics with commentary by trial consultants as well as articles on litigation advocacy skills by experienced trial consultants. The journal is free and open to subscribers.

January 17th, 2010
... do animals have emotions? Learn about the emotional life of animals on a blog from Mark Bekoff from the Psychology Today website that explores how/if animals think and feel, including morality, spirituality, love, and how animals think about us.

January 10th, 2010
... there is scientific proof people are happier on weekends! Using pagers with 74 adults over the course of three weeks participants were randomly paged throughout the day and asked to rate their activities. The findings were that "Men and women alike feel better — emotionally and physically — from Friday evening through Sunday afternoon, regardless of their age, education, salary, marital status or how many hours they work, the study says. It's published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology."

January 3rd, 2010
... thinking you have more self-control ironically leads you engage in my tempting situations and are thus more likely to give in to temptation. See this article about how "students who were made to feel fatigued were less confident in their ability to control fatigue and were less willing to put off studying for exams" whereas "Smokers who were led to believe that they had superior self-control were more willing to keep a proscribed cigarette in their proximity, and, as a result, they were more likely to smoke it."