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Dr. Rodney Hammond: A successful career of blending research and community work
One of the goals of the American Psychological Association is “to advance the communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society.” As the head of the Center for Disease Control’s Division of Violence Prevention, Dr. Rodney Hammond has worked to achieve this goal by bringing scientific rigor and leadership to curbing violence in our…
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Testing theoretical models while answering real world questions
In my previous blog post I wrote about the need for applying health research to improve community health. Another glaring need is to conduct research that both test theoretical models and addresses community-relevant questions. What does this mean? Dr. Eve Brank and Lindsey Wylie outline a perfect example in their recent Monitor on Psychology article…
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The Psychology of Radiation Panic
A recent McClatchy-Marist poll found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans think a nuclear disaster similar to what happened in March of this year in Japan could happen here. Why do so many people suddenly think that nuclear disaster is likely? Recent research in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General might shed some light on the…
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Using health data to improve community health
Often in academia the direct arrow from research findings to improving the human condition is hard to see. I believe this is a major problem specifically in the area of health and wellness. Governmental organizations, the private sector, and foundations spend billions of dollars on health research and yet the health of U.S. individuals and…
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Are you more of a conformist during flu season?
Looking back on social psychology’s greatest hits, my mind always drifts first to studies on conformity, largely because they make such good stories. Take Asch, for instance. Who would’ve thought that so many people would willingly follow the crowd in giving a blatantly wrong answer about line length? And then, of course, there’s Milgram. It…
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The Power of Glasses: Evidence-Based Charitable Giving, Part 2
In the poor, rural Gansu province in China, 10-15% of young students need glasses but only 2% of those kids actually have glasses. To follow up on my previous post on the science of charitable giving, in this post I’ll briefly describe a recent study which found that simply giving these students glasses significantly increased…
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Conventional wisdom upset? Persistent action potential firing in distal axons
Here’s some really interesting information that may change our traditional views about information flow in the nervous system. Neuroscience students learn early on about the mechanics of nerve impulses. It’s important because it’s how neurons, the cells of the nervous system, convey information to each other. Feel free to start reading after the figure to…
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Psychological Stress and Aging
Anti-aging skin care products are now ubiquitous, and there is some evidence suggesting that ingredients such as vitamin C, derivatives of vitamin A, green tea, and alpha hydroxy acids are effective in reducing wrinkles and increasing elasticity of the skin. However, these anti-aging creams aren’t the only means of delaying or concealing the effects of…
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Who Should Get Your Charity Money? Scientific Perspectives on Giving
In the past, my partner and I have mostly haphazardly divvied up our good intentions to whichever charities are most easily accessible to us because of advertisements or a person standing in a grocery store parking lot. Lately, we are rethinking that (lack of) strategy. As Yale economists Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel wrote in…