Welcome to the Weekly Medius PsychNews. Every week, we select five thought-provoking Psychology articles from hundreds published in journals and other media. Psychology Drives Everything.

 

 How Political Opinions Change:
Our political opinions and attitudes are an important part of who we are and how we construct our identities. Hence, if I ask your opinion on health care, you will not only share it with me, but you will likely resist any of my attempts to persuade you of another point of view. Likewise, it would be odd for me to ask if you are sure that what you said actually was your opinion. If anything seems certain to us, it is our own attitudes. But what if this weren’t necessarily the case? In a recent experiment, we showed it is possible to trick people into changing their political views. In fact, we could get some people to adopt opinions that were directly opposite of their original ones. Full article.


How you react to stress may predict brain health:
New research finds that our response to even minor daily stressors, such as getting stuck in traffic or queuing for too long at the supermarket, can affect how healthy our brain is, particularly into old age.  Prolonged chronic stress can lead to a wide range of adverse health consequences, from diabetes, heart disease, and sexual dysfunction, to mental health conditions, such as depression, burnout, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and even schizophrenia. Full article. I’m driving with my wife to a friend’s house that we’ve never been to before. “Why don’t you use the GPS?” she asks. “Because I know where I’m going,” I reply. She sighs and reaches over to turn on the GPS. “Well I don’t know where you’re going,” she mutters. My wife and I fit the gender stereotype about men being good with directions and women easily getting lost. Some studies looking at men’s and women’s performance in navigational skills have found slight gender differences. The usual explanation is that men tend to navigate by generating two-dimensional maps in their head, while women tend to navigate by routes and landmarks. Full article.
The act of drawing something has a “massive” benefit for memory compared with writing it down:
A picture is worth a thousand words…. When it comes to conveying a concept, this sentiment can certainly be true. But it may also be the case for memory. At least that’s the message from Myra Fernandes and colleagues at the University of Waterloo, Canada – writing in Current Directions in Psychological Science, they argue that their research programme shows that drawing has a “surprisingly powerful influence” on memory, and as a mnemonic technique, it could be particularly useful for older adults – and even people with dementia. Full article.
Too Much Sleep Can Hinder Cognition:
In the largest study of sleep to date, preliminary findings suggest that people who sleep on average between 7 to 8 hours per night perform better cognitively than those who sleep less, or more, than this amount. The sleep study began June 2017 with more than 40,000 people from around the world participating online. The study methodology included an in-depth questionnaire and a series of cognitive performance activities. Neuroscientists from the Brain and Mind Institute of Western University in Ontario published their findings in the journal, SLEEP.  Full article.