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Robert Provine, 1943 – 2019
APS Fellow Robert R. Provine, who studied the development and evolutionary basis of laughter, hiccupping, yawning, and other social behaviors, died October 17. Provine was a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, where he studied and taught for over 40 years after earning his Ph D in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis in 1971. In his social neuroscience research, Provine explored how behavior builds bonds in pursuit of universal underlying processes not only through work with humans, but through comparative studies of dozens of species ranging from chimpanzees to penguins, insects, and snakes.
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Need to Solve a Problem? Sleep On It
You truly are better off getting a good night’s sleep before making any tough decisions, findings from a study at Northwestern University suggest.
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Stanford psychology expert: This is the No. 1 work skill of the future—but most fail to realize it
You pick up your phone to look at the news notification and answer your text, only to check a Facebook post and then watch a Youtube video. Suddenly, before you know it, an hour has passed, and you haven’t accomplished a single work-related task. ... What’s the cost of all this? In 1971, the psychologist Herbert A. Simon emphasized that a wealth of information means a dearth of something else: attention. ... That said, not being distractable is the single most important skill for the 21st century. Many experts, including Adam Grant, who said that “success and happiness belong to people who can control their attention,” have addressed the importance of focus.
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Excessive brain activity linked to a shorter life
One key to a longer life could be a quieter brain without too much neural activity, according to a new study that examined postmortem brain tissue from extremely long-lived people for clues about what made them different from people who died in their 60s and 70s. “Use it or lose it” has dominated thinking on how to protect the aging brain, and extensive research shows there are many benefits to remaining physically and mentally active as people get older. But the study, published in the journal Nature, suggests more isn’t always better. Excessive activity — at least at the level of brain cells — could be harmful. ...
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How Dishonesty Drains You
Have you ever told a friend a made-up story to entertain that person or spare his or her feelings? Do you know anyone who confessed to you he or she overreported the number of hours worked to pad a paycheck? Some may think of these “white lies,” or small instances of dishonest behavior, as relatively harmless, a slight ethical lapse, when compared with full-scale corporate fraud. We may consider a white lie to be especially harmless if it is in service of protecting an important relationship. Researchers have studied the potential financial and legal consequences of such small instances of dishonesty as padding expense reports and pilfering pens.
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New UCLA institute will study — and spread — kindness
A friendly smile. A food pantry donation. Or, a remarkable act of Los Angeles benevolence — allowing a driver to cut in front of you. Such acts of kindness have a self-serving upside, too, as science has conclusively shown they also make you healthier. Now UCLA is poised to advance that science with the Wednesday launch of the world’s first interdisciplinary research institute on kindness, which will explore, for instance, how and why being nice to others reduces depression and the risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease.
