Joy Project, The
The Joy Project is a US-based, non-profit organisation that aims to
provide solutions to eating disorders through supporting and conducting
research, education, and support programmes. The site provides links to
treatment centres (mostly in the United States), a newsletter, a forum,
and a series of articles on eating disorders. It should be useful for
students, teachers and researchers.
http://www.joyproject.org/index.html
The human brain responds to being treated fairly the same way it responds to winning money and eating chocolate, UCLA scientists report. Being treated fairly turns on the brain's reward circuitry... By Stuart Wolpert 4/21/2008 UCLA Newsroom
1 – 4 May 2008 3-Day Retreat for Health Professionals, Coaches and Educators: Goudini Spa, Worcester
A Taste of Mindfulness and its Clinical Applications: MBSR
(Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) and MBCT (Mindfulness-Based
Cognitive Therapy)
This Retreat is accredited with 28 CPD points for doctors.
Thursday 1 May: 15h30 – 18h00 Registration
Sunday 4 May: 14h00 End
8 May 2008 Public Lecture and Book Signing : Old Mutual Conference Centre, Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, Cape Town
Coming to Our Senses:Healing Ourselves in Ways Little and Big Through Mindfulness
18h30 – 19h30: Registration
19h30 – 21h00: Talk
21h00 – 22h00: Book signing
9 May 2008 Full day public seminar : Old Mutual Conference Centre, Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, Cape Town
A Day of Mindfulness Practice and Dialogue
08h00 – 09h00: Registration
17h00: End
10 – 11 May 2008 Two-day Retreat for Business Leaders : hosted by the UCT Graduate School of Business
The Power of Mindfulness: A Retreat for Business and Thought Leaders
Vineyard Hotel, Cape Town
Saturday 10 May: 07h30 – 08h30 Registration
Sunday 11 May: 15h30 End
Download: registration form
3 day Retreat for Health Professionals, Coaches and Educators LIMITED SPACE AVAILABLE
Goudini Spa - standard rate = R4800 pp
Goudini Spa – 10% discount for sharing a room = R4364pp
3 day Retreat Goudini Spa – 10% discount for members = R4364pp
* Maximum of 10% discount per person
This price includes accommodation, all meals, lectures and lecture
materials. Accommodation is available in luxury chalets with 3 bedrooms
and 2 bathrooms per chalet. The programme will start on the evening of
1 May and ends after lunch on 4 May 2008.
8 May – Public Lecture and Book Signing Cape Town = R180pp
This price includes arrival refreshments and the lecture.
9 May – Public Seminar – Cape Town = R1200 pp
This price includes 2 refreshment breaks, lunch, the lectures and lecture materials.
Please read carefully through the background information of each event before registration and payment to ensure that you are qualified to attend this event.
The Institute for Mindfulness cannot take registrations for the Business Leadership Retreat. Please contact Junita Abrahams, (021) 406 1323, abrahams@gsb.uct.ac.za (Website and online bookings: www.gsb.uct.ac.za/retreat ) if you are interested in registering for this event.
TERMS & CONDITIONS:
RETREAT: Full payment on registration.
ALL OTHER EVENTS: Final confirmation only on full payment.
Confirmations on first-come-first-served basis based on payments.
Cancellations: No refunds after 21 April
Closing date for registrations: 1 week prior to the date of the event
Only cheque deposits and EFT transfer will be accepted.
Rationalization and Cognitive Dissonance: Do Choices Affect or Reflect Preferences? (PDF; 65 KB)
Source: M. Keith Chen, Associate Professor of Economics, Yale School of Management
Cognitive dissonance is one of the most influential theories in social psychology, and its oldest experiential realization is choice-induced dissonance. Since 1956, dissonance theorists have claimed that people rationalize past choices by devaluing rejected alternatives and upgrading chosen ones, an effect known as the spreading of preferences. Here, I show that every study which has tested this suffers from a fundamental methodological flaw. Specifically, these studies (and the free-choice methodology they employ) implicitly assume that before choices are made, a subject’s preferences can be measured perfectly, i.e. with infinite precision, and under-appreciate that a subject’s choices reflect their preferences. Because of this, existing methods will mistakenly identify cognitive dissonance when there is none. This problem survives all controls present in the literature, including control groups, high and low dissonance conditions, and comparisons of dissonance across cultures or affirmation levels. The bias this problem produces can be fixed, and correctly interpreted several prominent studies actually reject the presence of choice-induced dissonance in their subjects. This suggests that mere choice may not be enough to induce rationalization, a reversal that may significantly change the way we think about cognitive dissonance as a whole.
See: And Behind Door No. 1, a Fatal Flaw (New York Times)
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Short Sleep Duration in Infancy and Risk of Childhood Overweight
Source: Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine
Daily sleep duration of less than 12 hours during infancy appears to be a risk factor for overweight and adiposity in preschool-aged children.
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Parent-Reported
Sleep Problems During Development and Self-reported Anxiety/Depression,
Attention Problems, and Aggressive Behavior Later in Life
Source: Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine
Sleep problems are risk indicators of later emotional difficulties in childhood and adolescence and in adulthood, as well as across these developmental periods. Although most research, to date, has focused on symptoms of insomnia in association with emotional difficulties, there is emerging evidence that other sleep and sleep-related problems (referred to herein as sleep problems) may also be linked to subsequent difficulties that are not only emotional but also behavioral. Indeed, results of one study demonstrated that a composite of different sleep problems predicted symptoms of anxiety and depression, attention problems, and aggression later in life. For knowledge concerning links between sleep problems and later emotional and behavioral difficulties to be maximally beneficial to the physician, clarification of which particular sleep problems are associated with later difficulties is paramount. Toward this aim, this article documents associations between parental perceptions of 6 aspects of sleep (examined during development) and subsequent self-reported emotional and behavioral difficulties in a representative sample of 2076 participants from Zuid-Holland. This study is novel in allowing comparison of different types of sleep problems as predictors of different types of later behavioral and emotional problems. Based on previous research, associations between different aspects of sleep and different types of emotional and behavioral problems were expected, but hypotheses concerning specific patterns of association were considered premature.
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Misery is not Miserly: Sad and Self-Focused Individuals Spend More (PDF; 236 KB)
Source: Society for Personality and Social Psychology (annual meeting)
From press release (National Science Foundation):
Off to buy a new handbag and fabulous red shoes, or how about overalls and a riding lawnmower? Before going, a mood check for signs of despair and gloom might be in order because how a person feels can impact routine economic transactions, whether he or she is aware of it or not.
So says a team of behavioral scientists from four major U.S. universities, whose research study finds that sadness impacts spending. Specifically, people who feel sad and self-focused pay more money for goods than those in neutral states, even when purchasing the same item.
“The tendency is to focus on oneself when sad drives this effect,” says the study’s lead author Cynthia E. Cryder, a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa. “Our studies revealed the more self-focused people were in the sad condition, the more money they spent.”
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Social Anxiety Disorder Prevents Millions of Americans from Having Fulfilling Relationships
Source: Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA)
Social anxiety disorder can wreak havoc on the social and romantic lives of the 15 million American adults who suffer from the disorder, leaving them isolated, ashamed and in some cases, misdiagnosed, according to a new survey commissioned by the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA) and conducted by Harris Interactive. One of the most troubling findings is that 36% of people with the disorder, which is also known as social phobia, report experiencing symptoms for 10 or more years before seeking help.
…
Social anxiety disorder, or SAD, is an intense, persistent fear of being scrutinized and negatively evaluated by others in social or performance situations. SAD can cause people to avoid such situations or other people for fear of humiliating or embarrassing themselves. People with social anxiety disorder have excessive, irrational fear of seemingly routine situations, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
+ Survey results (PDF; 52 KB)
Hat tip: PW
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Science of love and the future of women, the
This
video talk, hosted by the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference,
is presented by Helen Fisher. She discusses the evolution of love, its
importance to human society, and its stages (lust, infatuation, and long-term
attachment), while maintaining an anthropological perspective. The talk is 23
minutes in length and presented within an embedded Flash player. It should be
useful for students and teachers. Intute.ac.uk
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/16
Neuroethics and Law Blog
The Neuroethics and Law Blog is described as being an “interdisciplinary forum for legal and ethical issues related to the mind and brain”. The blog is edited by Adam J. Kolber who is a professor of law at the University of San Diego and the site is aimed at bioethicists, legal academics, practitioners, neuroscientists, neurologists, criminologists and others. Posts highlight newly published research, news items and details of conferences and events. Links are given to journal articles, research papers and related websites. Recent posts have looked at research on neurowarfare and the limits of international humanitarian law, the effect of stress on the brain and the results of a survey on cognitive enhancement. There is an archive of post back to July 2007. Intute.ac.uk
http://kolber.typepad.com/ethics_law_blog/
Internationale Erich Fromm Gesellschaft e.V.
The website for the Internationale Erich Fromm Gesellschaft (International Erich Fromm society) makes available information about the German psychoanalyst and social psychologist (1900-1980), who was also an important representative of 20th-century humanism, working in various fields of the Humanities. The Society publishes some 500 PDF files on this site of contributions by Fromm and authors discussing his writing. Users can access the archive's files written by Fromm from a chronological list, which also provides the title, type of document, and year of publication. Contributions by other writers are located from an alphabetical list. Texts are in German or English and there is a search facility to locate keywords. There is also a detailed bibliography of Fromm's works and works on him. Mp3 files of Fromm reading excerpts of his work give users an idea of his voice.
Erich Fromm bequeathed his library and papers to his executor Dr Rainer Funk, who has in turn made the contents available to members of the Society for consultation upon appointment. Along with the Society's own archive, this collection will prove extremely useful for scholars of Fromm. Details of past and upcoming conferences and events are given on the site, as is information on the Erich Fromm Award, a generous award that recognises excellence in preserving humanistic thought. The Society aims to promote research into Fromm's thought in the fields of social sciences, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and religion. This is a user-friendly site which promises much to those interested in Fromm and his writings. Intute.ac.uk
http://www.erich-fromm.de/
Forensic psychology forum UK
This forum is based in the UK and provides an arena for those with questions (and answers) on the topic of forensic psychology. Subjects include careers, opportunities for professional training, publications, events, and links to further resources. This forum should be useful for teachers, students and researchers. Intute.ac.uk
http://www.forensic-psychology-forum.co.uk/
Studies show that people inhabit two separate worlds - the social and the financial - and depending on which one is activated, their thoughts and behaviour can change dramatically...
This chasm between our social and financial worlds has been explored in two recent studies that uncover fascinating ways in which money affects our thoughts and behaviour. In the first, participants were subjected to one of social scientists' favourite ruses: the apparently pointless task. They were simply asked to drag a circle across a computer screen as many times as they could in five minutes (Heyman & Ariely, 2004)...[more]
References
Frank,
R. H., Gilovich, T., & Regan, D. T. (1993). Does Studying Economics
Inhibit Cooperation? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 7(2), 159-171.
Heyman, J., & Ariely, D. (2004). Effort for Payment. A Tale of Two Markets. Psychological Science, 15(11), 787-93.
Vohs, K. D., Mead, N. L., & Goode, M. R. (2006). The Psychological Consequences of Money. Science, 314, 1154-1156.
From PsychBlog