Psychology Space

By: Carlin Flora
Summary: The queen is the most powerful piece on the chessboard. Yet in the ultra-elite ranks of chess, a woman who can hold her own is the rarest of creatures. How, then, did one family produce three of the most successful female chess champions ever?
The world’s first female grandmaster was ready to deliver her regular Thursday-night lecture. Susan Polgar was perfumed, coiffed, made-up and dressed in a sleek black pantsuit, an elegant contrast to the boys and young men hunched over their boards in her Queens, New York, chess club. “I have a special treat,” Susan, 36, announced in her gentle Hungarian accent. “Tonight, everyone will get to play me.”
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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution - October 16, 2005

Submerged somewhere beneath the snarl of superstars, salaries, sabermetrics and steroids, baseball is still what baseball has always been: nine guys vs. nine guys, nice landscaping, pleasant weather, lukewarm beer.

And, says a neuroscientist and psychologist at Emory University, baseball is a useful metaphor for life. In her freshman seminar Psych 190: Science and Myth of Baseball, Hillary Rodman takes a kind of intellectual batting practice with 14 students, helping them seek answers to such questions as:

> Is a clubhouse leader worth a .212 batting average?

> Why is making $30 million so important to a player who “just loves the game”? more … more…

By Michelle Cleere, Sports Psychology Consultant

Introduction

While so much society right now is focused on obesity and that fact that obesity is right up there around the #1 killer of American’s, there is another portion of the population at the other end of the spectrum addicted to exercise. Most of these addicts are women, ages 35-60 that are “running on a treadmill for hours, spinning out of control or climbing stairs that lead to nowhere”1 because they have lost their physical, emotional and spiritual balance. They are unhappy in their lives wondering whether or not they have accomplished anything significant and are unhappy with their appearance.

This article is going to discuss positive versus negative exercise addiction, addiction and the brain, the personality of an addict, and how trainers might help offset exercise addiction.

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