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Happier Tweets, Healthier Communities
Pacific Standard: Why does one community have higher levels of heart disease than another? Some of the reasons are obvious, such as income and education levels or local eating and exercise norms. But as epidemiologists have long argued, other likely factors are more ephemeral. Among them: how angry or content the residents tend to feel, and whether the environment fosters a sense of social connectedness. Measuring such things is tough, but newly published research reports telling indicators can be found in bursts of 140 characters or less.
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The Forgiveness Boost
The Atlantic: On New Year’s Eve in 1995, Frances McNeill, a 78-year-old woman who lived alone in Knoxville, Tennessee, went to bed early. Outside, someone watched the house lights flick off. Figuring its inhabitants were gone for the night, he made his move. McNeill awoke to the sound of the intruder rummaging through her bookshelves and drawers. She walked out of her bedroom and crept up behind him. He swiveled around, raised his crowbar high above his head, and bludgeoned McNeill to death. Afterward, he raped her with a wine bottle. The next morning, McNeill’s son, Mike, discovered her body on the blood-stained carpet.
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Using Smartphones and Apps to Enhance Loyalty Programs
The New York Times: Nearly as long as there have been coffee shops and carwashes, all manner of businesses have handed out buy-10-get-one-free punch cards and hoped to reap the rewards of this simplest of loyalty marketing campaigns. But a new day is dawning. Smartphones and loyalty apps have begun offering small businesses enhanced program features and automated administration capabilities once affordable only to large companies like airlines and hotel chains. These capabilities also offer the equivalent of a real-world psychology lab for easily evaluating the effects of offerings and incentives on customer loyalty.
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THE SURPRISING AND POWERFUL LINKS BETWEEN POSTURE AND MOOD
Fast Company: The next time you’re feeling sad and depressed, pay close attention to your posture. According to cognitive scientists, you’ll likely be slumped over with your neck and shoulders curved forward and head looking down. While it’s true that you’re sitting this way because you’re sad, it’s also true that you’re sad because you’re sitting this way. This philosophy, known as embodied cognition, is the idea that the relationship between our mind and body runs both ways, meaning our mind influences the way our body reacts, but the form of our body also triggers our mind.
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The Sound of Intellect
Richard Nelson Bolles, a former Episcopal pastor, decided to self-publish his advice for job hunters in 1970, in the midst of a tough job market for newly-minted college graduates. The handbook—What Color is Your Parachute?—immediately gained popularity by word-of-mouth, and was soon on its way to the best-seller list. In the decades since, it has become the bible for young professionals entering the world of work. It has been revised almost every year, and has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
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Analysis of Social Cognition Predicts Dangerous Drivers
A team of psychological scientists in the Czech Republic is looking at the brains of bad drivers to understand why some of us flout the rules--putting others at risk of serious injury or death--while the rest of us abide by them. In a recent study published in the journal NeuroImage, lead author Jana Zelinková of the Central European Institute of Technology found that while watching videos on traffic safety, people with a history of dangerous driving show relatively less activation in brain areas associated with social cognition and empathy compared to their law-abiding counterparts.
