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New Report Reflects NCCIH Research Interest in Emotional Well-being
Today, I’m pleased to tell you about an exciting new direction at NCCIH for advancing our prevention research portfolio. One of the objectives in both NIH’s and NCCIH’s current strategic plans is to “foster health promotion and disease prevention.” At the Center, we pursue this objective by seeking to build knowledge of how complementary approaches could be useful across the life span to encourage better self-care, a healthy lifestyle, and the sense of well-being. Wellness, according to surveys, is a major reason that people turn to complementary approaches.
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Remembering Walter Mischel, with Love and Procrastination
Four years ago, I made a public promise to my former graduate adviser, Walter Mischel: within the year, I would publish the results of our five-year collaboration on self-control. Walter had called me out on my procrastination tendencies, and here I was, in these pages, claiming that I would change and make him proud. Walter died suddenly, on September 12th, at the age of eighty-eight. The research results, to my chagrin, remain planted in my dissertation. Walter wouldn’t have been surprised. Nor would he have been surprised to learn that I had intended to turn in this remembrance of him to my editor some three weeks ago.
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Applying for a Ph.D.? These 10 tips can help you succeed
Few things mark the return of the academic year like shorter days, falling leaves, and inquiries about applying for graduate school. For those nursing ambitions of pursuing a Ph.D., the prospect of navigating the labyrinthine guidelines posted on university websites can be daunting. The fact that many programs receive hundreds of carefully crafted applications for just a handful of positions in their Ph.D. programs can make a stressful process downright terrifying. No single article can cover every element of applying to grad school.
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Vergeht uns der Spaß am Fußball? (Do we miss the fun of football?)
Wer wissen will, warum König Fußball die Welt regiert, muss nur die alten Philosophen fragen, am besten Immanuel Kant. Der hat schon früh erkannt: „Der Himmel hat den Menschen als Gegengewicht gegen die vielen Mühseligkeiten drei Dinge gegeben: die Hoffnung, den Schlaf und das Lachen.“ Der Fußball lässt sie lachen. Der Spaß ist der Sauerstoff der Seele, behaupten kluge Köpfe, jedenfalls entführt der Fußball seine Fans aus der quälenden Realität des Alltags in eine wundervolle Traumwelt. Er ist für viele Lebenshilfe wie die harmonischen Heimatfilme, die nach dem Krieg die Welt für die Deutschen wieder heiler und erträglicher machten. --- Der Spaß ist sein Schlüssel zum Sieg.
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Can You Quantify Awe?
The state of awe is an unusual and complex emotion, mixing emotions that don’t tend to go with each other, such as ecstasy and fear. Surely such a complex emotion that is so deeply personal, cannot be quantified or captured in any scientific manner, right? Well, maybe it can. While the concept of awe and wonder has a long history in philosophy and religion, William James and Abraham Maslow helped bring it to psychology. Today, much of the contemporary investigation of awe stems from a 2003 paper, “Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion,”, written by Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt.
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Children Make Better Eyewitnesses than Adults in Certain Circumstances
Researchers find that young children aren’t always vulnerable to suggestive false memories and that adults go along with suggestions when they match up with their associations.
