A bully’s search for meaning
Middle school is a tough hurdle of lots of kids, but for far too many the academic rigor of algebra and world history is the least of it. Far more fearsome are the ridicule and verbal taunts and outright violence found in the corridors and schoolyards. Bullying is a serious problem worldwide, and one that grows worse as kids enter the threatening world of adolescence. Educators and mental health experts have tried mightily over the years to solve the problem of aggressive teenagers, yet the threat persists. Many psychologists believe that the root problem is the school bully’s fragile self-esteem, and many interventions now aim to reduce violence by boosting self-image. But an i

Guilt, blame and anti-Semitism
The phrase “secondary anti-Semitism” was coined following World War II to describe a newly emerging form of antipathy toward Jews, one actually fueled by memories of the Holocaust. The idea is that Jews’ ongoing suffering from German atrocities causes intolerable pangs of guilt in Germans—even young Germans—and this discomfort results in a paradoxical increase in anti-Jewish sentiment. The Israeli psychoanalyst Zvi Rex captured the irony best when he famously quipped: “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.” Such victim-blaming fits with a number of robust psychological ideas, most notably the “just world” theory: Humans are highly motivated to be

Don’t take my Kodachrome away . . .
Anyone who has ever been seriously ill or injured knows the comfort that comes from having a loved one at the bedside. And indeed studies have shown that a spouse’s loving touch can literally diminish a patient’s pain. Now a team of UCLA psychologists has taken this idea one step further, asking: Is it possible that merely having a photograph of one’s spouse might have the same therapeutic effect? Sarah Master and her colleagues recruited a group of women, all in long-term relationships, for a laboratory study of this provocative idea. After testing the women to determine their normal pain threshold, the researchers inflicted mild but unpleasant pain under a variety of circu

Psychological snake oil?
This from today’s issue of Science magazine: Shrinking the Shrinks Many training programs for clinical psychologists in the United States should be scrapped, an organization of psychologists says. In a report to be released this month, the Association for Psychological Science (APS) calls for more scientific rigor in psychotherapy. “Clinical psychology resembles medicine at a point in its history when practitioners were operating in a largely prescientific manner,” it says. Therapists’ “lack of adequate science training … leads them to value personal clinical experience over research evidence.” The report la

Thinking about stigma (and thinking and thinking . . .)
Stigma stings. Ask anyone who has been harassed or insulted or shunned because they’re gay or black or lesbian or fat or Asian or  .  .  .  the list goes on. In fact, “sting” may be too benign a word. Discrimination can cause serious psychological distress and even full-blown pathology. But how? What is the psychological mechanism by which the experience of stigma “gets under the skin” to cause illness? A couple new studies offer some insight into this complex and important question. Yale University psychologists Mark Hatzenbuehler, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema and John Dovidio suspected that emotional regulation might play a key role in the way people cope with daily acts o