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Making Every Day Earth Day, the Behavioral Science Way
One day every year, April 22, is dedicated to the care and stewardship of the Earth. Events are organized around the world in honor of what is officially known as "International Mother Earth Day," convening people to plant trees and clean up rivers, urging them to reduce their energy usage and minimize their overall environmental footprint. But how can we convert the enthusiasm and effort contained in one day into long-lasting changes in motivation and behavior that flow throughout the other 364 days of the year?
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Hungry? Avoid serious conversations with your spouse.
The Washington Post: Raise your hand if you’ve had a stupid fight with your husband or wife when you were hungry and cranky. Right, I thought so. Well, new research backs up the idea that when you’re hungry you have less self-control, and when you have less self-control, you tend to be more aggressive with intimate partners. Even more interesting is the way Ohio State scientists, led by Brad J. Bushman, a professor of psychology and communication, conducted their experiment.
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Be thankful and make better long-term decisions
The Boston Globe: We are notoriously bad at foregoing instant gratification for longer-term rewards. In laboratory studies and in the real world, people frequently make impatient decisions that economists would call “suboptimal,” and, in real-life terms, result in credit card debt, obesity, or drug addiction. Add emotion to the mix, and the decision-making seems to get worse: sad people make even more impatient financial decisions, one study found. Stamping out emotional responses seems like the best path to making wiser and more logical decisions.
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Q&A: Why 40% of us think we’re in the top 5%
SmartPlanet: In 1996 McArthur Wheeler walked into two banks and attempted to rob them in broad daylight, wearing no disguise. The video surveillance caught his face clearly and later that day he was recognized and arrested, to his surprise. He remarked, “But I wore the juice.” Wheeler mistakenly believed that rubbing lemon juice over your face and body rendered you invisible to video cameras. He had tested this apparently, by shooting a Polaroid of himself, and somehow his image mysteriously never appeared in the shot.
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Got A Hobby? Might Be A Smart Professional Move
NPR: Maybe you paint, keep a journal or knit. Or maybe you play bass in a punk rock band. Whatever hobby you have, keep at it. A little study published this week suggests that having a creative outlet outside the office might help people perform better at work. Psychologists from San Francisco State University found that the more people engaged in their hobbies, the more likely they were to come up with creative solutions to problems on the job. And no matter what the hobby was, these people were also more likely to go out of their way to help co-workers. The findings were published Wednesday in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.
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Not Enough Basketballs? The Too-Much-Talent Effect
The NBA playoffs are underway, and the Miami Heat are the odds-on favorite to “three-peat.” If they do—or if they don’t for that matter—the outcome will fuel an enduring debate about how best to build a sports franchise. Back in 2010, the Heat opted to wager hundreds of millions of dollars on the Big 3—signing superstars LeBron James and Chris Bosh on top of pricey local favorite Dwayne Wade. James boastfully predicted a Heat dynasty, while cynics chanted a more skeptical mantra: “Not enough basketballs” for those super egos. Is there such a thing as having too much talent?