Blog

  • Narcissism Bites the Dust

    NYT:  A Fate That Narcissists Will Hate: Being Ignored. Narcissists, much to the surprise of many experts, are in the process of becoming an endangered species.  Not that they face imminent extinction — it’s a fate much worse than that. They will still be around, but they will be ignored.  The fifth edition of the…

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  • Siblings Split

    Theories about how siblings develop such different personalities (NPR). “Children in the same family are more similar than children taken at random from the population,” Plomin says, “but not much more.”  In fact, in terms of personality, we are similar to our siblings only about 20 percent of the time.

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  • Mastery v. Performance

    PsychCental: Personal Goal-Setting Strategy Affects Relationships According to investigators, goal-setting behavior may influence whether people will be comfortable in sharing and communicating. For example, people with “mastery goals” want to improve themselves. Maybe they want to get better grades, make more sales, or land that triple toe loop. On the other hand, people with what psychologists call “performance…

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  • Stressed in L.A.

      The APA’s “Stress in America” survey has some things to say about living in Los Angeles. –Almost three in 10 (29 percent) residents report having a great deal of stress (defined as an 8, 9 or 10 on a scale of 1 to 10), compared to 24 percent of Americans overall. –LA residents are…

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  • Persuasion

    PsyBlog looks at thinking v. feeling when trying to persuade. [I]f you want to persuade someone, then it’s useful to know whether they are a thinker or a feeler and target your message accordingly. If you don’t already know then the easiest way to find out is listen for whether they describe the world cognitively…

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