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Psychologist takes a stand on why posture matters
The Columbus Dispatch: Appearances at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conferences have made stars of unlikely people, but perhaps no one more so than Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist and associate professor at Harvard Business School. Her rousing presentation in 2012 at the TED Global idea conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, on “ power poses” is among the most viewed TED talks of all time. Cuddy, 42, has attracted speaking invitations from throughout the world, a contract for a book to be published next year and an eclectic army of posture-conscious followers.
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Steven Pinker: By the Book
The New York Times: The author of “The Language Instinct,” “The Blank Slate” and, most recently, “The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century” has never gotten in trouble for reading a book. “Just for writing them.” What books are currently on your night stand? “How Could This Happen: Explaining the Holocaust,” by Dan McMillan. “Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found,” by Frances Larson. “Ascent of the A-Word: A_ism, the First Sixty Years,” by Geoffrey Nunberg. “The Enlightenment,” by Anthony Pagden. “Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow,” by F. R. Leavis. What was the last truly great book you read?
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Sharing Makes Both Good and Bad Experiences More Intense
Sharing an experience, such as tasting chocolate, with another person — even if we do it in silence, with someone we met just moments ago — seems to intensify that experience.
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How Environment Can Boost Creativity
The Atlantic: It took F. Scott Fitzgerald nearly a decade to finish Tender is the Night, his semi-autobiographical novel about the physical, financial, and moral decline of a man with nearly limitless potential. While working on the novel, Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, moved between France, Switzerland, and the United States, eventually spending eighteen months at La Paix, an old country house north of Baltimore that he rented while Zelda was treated for schizophrenia at a nearby clinic. The Turnbull family owned the estate, and Andrew Turnbull, who was 11 at the time, later recounted Fitzgerald’s stay in his biography, Scott Fitzgerald. ... Kathleen D.
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Religious or not, we all misbehave
Science: Benjamin Franklin tracked his prideful, sloppy, and gluttonous acts in a daily journal, marking each moral failing with a black ink dot. Now, scientists have devised a modern update to Franklin’s little book, using smart phones to track the sins and good deeds of more than 1200 people. The new data—among the first to be gathered on moral behavior outside of the lab—confirm what psychologists have long suspected: Religious and nonreligious people are equally prone to immoral acts.
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Beware of Joy
The New York Times: If you’re a defensive pessimist (or even just a regular pessimist), you may already be familiar with the phenomenon known as “fear of happiness.” If you’re not, Bettina Chang of Pacific Standard offers a baseball-related example: “Give me a game where my team is winning in the final seconds, and I’ll enumerate the ways to lose the lead before it’s over. It’s come to the point where I get more anxious when my team is winning than when it is losing.