Www.soc.iastate.edu/sapp/videogames1.pdf. Facial Expressions Control Emotions. By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on February 1, 2010 Obviously displaying a sad face or a happy face can inform others of what you are thinking or feeling. New research suggests facial expression may also play a role in understanding written language.
Specifically, researchers believe facial expressions can affect your ability to understand written language related to emotions. The findings were presented to the Society for Personal and Social Psychology in Las Vegas, and will be published in the journal Psychological Science. The new study reported on 40 people who were treated with botulinum toxin, or Botox. The interactions of facial expression, thoughts and emotions has intrigued scientists for more than a century, says the study’s first author, University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology Ph.D. candidate David Havas. The results showed no change in the time needed to understand the happy sentences. Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison. Frequent Conflict with Family and Friends Can Double Risk of Death. By Janice Wood Associate News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on May 9, 2014 A new study has found that frequent arguments with spouses, relatives, or neighbors may boost the risk of death from any cause in middle age.
The research, from scientists at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, found that men and people who were unemployed seemed to be most vulnerable. According to the researchers, they wanted to find out if the stressors inherent in family relationships and friendship had any impact on a person’s risk of death from any cause. To do this, they surveyed about 10,000 men and women between the ages of 36 and 52 about their social relationships. All the participants were already taking part in the Danish Longitudinal Study on Work, Unemployment and Health. The researchers focused on who — among spouses, children, other relatives, friends, or neighbors — made excess demands, prompted worries, or was a source of conflict. Source: British Medical Journal. Men Respond to Stress by Shutting Down. By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on September 29, 2010 A new study finds that stressed men have diminished activity in brain regions responsible for understanding others’ feelings.
In the investigation, researchers had men look at angry faces. The results suggest the silent and stoic response to stress might be a “guy thing” after all. “These are the first findings to indicate that sex differences in the effects of stress on social behavior extend to one of the most basic social transactions — processing someone else’s facial expression,” said Mara Mather, director of the Emotion and Cognition Lab at USC. In an article appearing in the journal NeuroReport , Mather and her coauthors present a series of tests indicating that, under acute stress, men had less brain response to facial expressions, in particular, fear and anger.
Men and women under stress were as adept as those in the control group at remembering the faces. How Often Should We Trust Our Intuition? By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on January 5, 2011 For many, our gut response helps us make the call when confronted with a difficult decision. But is this always the correct course of action? A new study exploring the decision-making process finds the abiliity to make hunch decisions varies considerably: Intuition can either be a useful ally or it can lead to costly and dangerous mistakes. Research findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest the trustworthiness of our intuition is really influenced by what is happening physically in our bodies. “We often talk about intuition coming from the body — following our gut instincts and trusting our hearts,” said Barnaby D.
To investigate how different bodily reactions can influence decision-making, Dunn and his co-authors asked study participants to try to learn how to win at a card game they had never played before. The Peaceful Mind: 5 Step Guide to Feeling Relaxed Fast. How to fight a psychological scourge of the modern world. We worry about work, money, our health, our partners, children...the list goes on. And let's face it, there are plenty of things to worry about, and that's even before you've turned on the news.
This means that when the mind is given an idle moment, often what it seems to fill it with is worrying. Worry can be useful if it's aimed at solving problems but less useful when it's just making us unhappy or interfering with our daily lives. The standard psychological methods for dealing with everyday worry are pretty simple. So here is a five-step plan called "The Peaceful Mind" that was actually developed by psychologists specifically for people with dementia ( Paukert et al., 2013 ). 1. This is the step most people skip. But sometimes the situations, physical signs and emotions that accompany anxiety aren't as obvious as you might think.
Sometimes this stage on its own is enough to help people with their anxiety. 2. 3. 4. 5. A Better Way to Cope With Persistent Bad Memories. New technique holds promise for those experiencing disturbing emotional flashbacks. A better way to deal with recurring negative memories is to focus on the context and not the emotion, according to a new study published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (Denkova et al., 2014). For example, if you were thinking about a funeral you attended, you might focus on what you were wearing or who was there, instead of how you were feeling at the time.
Professor Florin Dolcos, one of the study’s authors, thinks this approach could provide a promising alternative to other ways of regulating the emotions, like suppression and reappraisal. Dolcos explained: “Sometimes we dwell on how sad, embarrassed, or hurt we felt during an event, and that makes us feel worse and worse.This is what happens in clinical depression — ruminating on the negative aspects of a memory. The researchers reached this conclusion by asking participants to share both positive and negative memories.