LATEST PSYCHOLOGY

Do you struggle breaking the ice during social or networking situations? Are you interested in spring cleaning your energy this weekend? Have you had some negative mental health experiences with fitness apps?

We’ve got the latest on each of these and more in this week’s Psychology Around the Net!

Psychologists Agree: ‘Tell Me About Yourself’ Is the Only Icebreaker You’ll Ever Need: Talking to new people at a social function or networking event can be tough, especially for people with social anxiety. How do you get their attention? How do you start talking to them? How do you break the ice? Psychologists say the best way to do all that is with four simple words: tell me about yourself. Personally, I kind of freeze up and experience more anxiety when people ask me to tell them about myself (OMG what do I say?!), but here are six tips to help us all navigate the “tell me about yourself” process from start to finish.

Air Pollution Tied to Mental Health Issues in Teenagers: A recent study involving more than 2,000 British teenagers whose health researchers followed from birth until they turned 18 years old has associated urban air pollution with an increased risk for psychotic experiences. According to the study, almost a third of the participants reported they had experienced at least one psychotic experience, ranging from mild paranoia to a more severe psychotic symptom, since the age of 12.

9 Ways to ‘Spring Clean’ Your Energy: Entertaining “blah” thoughts, cluttered and dusty personal space, losing motivation to keep up healthy routines — you have to admit, these and others are ways your energy can get junked up during the dark winter months. Now that spring is here, let’s look at some of the ways you can clean that energy up.

These ‘Wear Your Meds’ Buttons Tackle the Stigma of Taking Mental Illness Drugs: Have y’all heard of the #WearYourMeds movement started by Lauren Weiss? Essentially, you wear a button (or buttons, depending) that depicts the mental health medication you take (alternatively, you can purchase a button that reads “Wear Your Meds”) as a way to, ideally, act as a conversation starter to promote mental health awareness. Although it’s not affiliated with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), all proceeds do go to NAMI. Thoughts?

Sports Psychologists Say Running Apps May Be Damaging Your Health: My knee-jerk reaction to this title was, “What?! I love my C25K app!” After reading the article, I realized the professionals make some good points. Sports psychologists Dr. Andrew Wood and Dr. Martin Turner believe fitness apps (and running apps in particular), which generally are designed to help us meet certain fitness or training goals, could do us more harm than good by contributing to an unhealthy relationship with exercise (and our need for social media validation).

Pope Francis Wants Psychological Testing to Prevent Problem Priests. But Can It Really Do That? ICYMI: The Catholic Church is dealing with one sexual abuse scandal after another lately. Now, Pope Francis has announced a policy he wants to implement worldwide — one that would, ideally, prevent any man from becoming a priest if he can’t pass a psychological evaluation proving he’s suited to a life of chastity. However, scholars, researchers, and even others in the Church are questioning whether or not this is actually possible.

from World of Psychology https://ift.tt/2HO6sIK