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What’s the Deal with Replication?
Wondering what the fun and fascinating stories were in the world of Psychology on Twitter this week? Let me tell you! The Psychology Twittersphere has been full of thoughts about a very important topic lately: Replication. If you remember back to your first science classes, replication is a key part of the scientific method! In…
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A Day in the Life of a Grad Student
It is probably a cliché to say that no two days are alike for a graduate student. For me, this variety makesthe hard work and long hours of graduate student life worth it. What makes up those long hours? It varies from student to student and as your program progresses. In the first few years,…
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Feeling the Love [Hormone]: the Oxytocin Receptor
![Feeling the Love [Hormone]: the Oxytocin Receptor](https://sites.lifesci.ucla.edu/psych-pia/wp-content/uploads/sites/290/2014/04/Oxytocin3d-300x240-1.png)
Oxytocin has gotten a lot of hype as the biological basis of our favorite human emotion, Love. Oxytocin is a hormone produced by the hypothalamus and released by the posterior pituitary gland. The oxytocin system is involved in HPA axis and autonomic nervous system functions as well as reproductive functions and social behaviors. We are coming…
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Graduate Program Interviews: Health Psychology
This post is part of an ongoing series about applicant interview weekends in Psychology departments. Check back for posts about interviews in other areas of Psychology, and visit our Careers in Psychology section. So you want to be a Health Psychologist? Here are some tips from current Health graduate students on questions they asked [or wish they had…
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Psychology Classics: James Pennebaker’s Expressive Writing Paradigm
ames Pennebaker’s writing paradigm was an important contribution to the young field of health psychology at the time and continues to be used today to explore connections between disclosure and physical and mental health and to generate hypotheses about other psychological phenomena.
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Happy Hearts
There is a long history and a strong literature linking psychological aspects of peoples’ lives and coronary heart disease. Early research found a connection between coronary heart disease and a personality characteristic called Type A. Type A personality is characterized by time urgency, strong competitive drive, and hostility. Though some of these characteristics are related to…
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Why do we blame the victim?
Have you ever wondered why people tend to blame the victim for the negative circumstances that befall them? Social psychologists have! Melvin Lerner coined the term “belief in a just world” to describe the cognitive bias people have that the world is governed by justice. He and other researchers have investigated how this belief relates…