Our round-up of the latest psychology links from around the web:

Tips from psychologists on how to maintain focus at work (New York Times). Don’t worry, reading the Digest blog definitely counts as work.

Facebook users average just 3.74 degrees of separation from each other, according to new research.

But … “It’s not socially meaningful that a friend of your friends is buddies with an acquaintance of someone else’s pal. It’s just an innate feature of large, tangled networks,” says mathematician Matt Parker for the Guardian.

Going into brain surgery with your eyes open. A shortlisted essay in the Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize.

Chief Murdoch-hunter and MP Tom Watson leaps to the defence of violent video games.

“We’re Nowhere Near Artificial Brains,” argues neurobiologist Mark Changizi.

Slate magazine reviews A Dangerous Method, the new Cronenberg film about Freud and Jung’s relationship.

Vaughan Bell of Mind Hacks and The Psychologist reports on the New York psychoanalytic scene.

The November issue of the American Psychological Association’s Monitor magazine is online and includes an article on suicides among psychologists.

This week’s Science Weekly podcast from the Guardian reports from the recent Society for Neuroscience conference in Washington.

Former political spin-meister Alistair Campbell on myths about schizophrenia.

Animal intelligence researcher and scientist-in-residence at the Rambert Dance Company Nicky Clayton was on The Life Scientific on BBC Radio 4, currently available on iPlayer.

Watch psychology’s Nobel winner, Daniel Kahneman, talk about the cognitive biases that affect our decisions.

The history of nude psychotherapy.

Does the language we speak shape how we think? The Economist hosted a debate.

How does Prozac work? Jonah Lehrer with an answer that might surprise you.

Read the opening chapters from this year’s Royal Society Winton Prize for Science books, including Through the Language Glass: How Words Colour Your World.

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore was on BBC Radio 3 this week talking about teen brains and the need to change society attitudes towards teenagers. It’s currently available on iPlayer.

A video introduction from the new editor of the Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders.

All in the Mind this week tackled riots, bullying and borderline personality disorder. It’s currently on iPlayer.

It’s locked behind a paywall unfortunately, but the Sunday Times had an intriguing article on the Met’s elite team of super-recognisers. “A team of police officers with staggering memories for faces are naming and helping to catch rioters seen on even the blurriest CCTV footage.”

Could you be a super-recogniser? There’s still time to take part in a public experiment at London’s Science Museum.

The December issue of The Psychologist magazine is online and includes an open-access article celebrating 25 years of the Health Psychology section at the British Psychological Society.

The advantages of being altruistic.

Chris Frith, author of “Making up the Mind: How the brain creates our mental world”, was on Conscious.TV

Science writer David Dobbs on the need to distinguish between traits and behaviours when discussing behavioural genetics findings.

—
Post compiled by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.