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Don’t Just Sit There
Slate: People hate commuting. Whether you’re inching along in traffic or avoiding eye contact with strangers on public transportation, your commute is something you’re resigned to tolerate—barely—as part of the daily grind. Ina 2004 study, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and his team found that in a daily log of activities, the amount of happiness people reported while commuting is about on par with the joy of housework. More than half of Americans spend at least 40 minutes in their round-trip commute; the national average is 50 minutes, and some folks, who the Census Bureau call “megacommuters,” spend more than three hours on the road every day.
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A More Supportive World Can Work Wonders for the Aged
The Wall Street Journal: This was a week of worry for my family. We were worrying about my 93-year-old mother-in-law—a lovely, bright, kind woman in the cruel grip of arthritis, Alzheimer’s and just plain old age. Of course, this is a commonplace, even banal story for my baby boomer generation, though no less painful for that. And it’s got an extra edge because we aren’t just worried about what will happen to our parents; we’re worried about what will happen to us, not just my husband and me, but our entire aging nation. Getting old, with its unavoidable biological changes and its inevitable end, might simply seem like an inescapably tragic part of the human condition.
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People Show “Blind Insight” Into Decision Making Performance
People can gauge the accuracy of their decisions, even if their decision making performance itself is no better than chance, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. In the study, people who showed chance-level decision making still reported greater confidence about decisions that turned out to be accurate and less confidence about decisions that turned out to be inaccurate.
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Can People Tell When They’re Too Sleepy to Drive Safely?
Drowsy driving may receive less media attention than drunk driving, but research shows that it’s startlingly common and can be just as dangerous as driving while drunk. A 2010 poll from the AAA Foundation found
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“Tears of Joy” May Help Us Maintain Emotional Balance
Many life experiences, such as witnessing the birth of a child or finally achieving a long sought-after goal, can lead to what may seem like confusing expressions of emotion, like tears of joy. But new research suggests that these incongruous expressions may serve a fundamental purpose, helping us to maintain emotional balance. The findings are forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “People may be restoring emotional equilibrium with these expressions,” said psychological scientist and lead researchers Oriana Aragon of Yale University.
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Summer-Haters Get Happy as Days Get Shorter
The Wall Street Journal: Many people get the blues as winter sets in. They experience rolling back the clock to end daylight-saving time and commuting home in the dark as a downer. Not so for Travis Hare. “I prefer colder temps and shorter days,” says Mr. Hare, co-principal of a Washington, D.C., marketing and public-relations firm. The 34-year-old hikes in the snow, vacations in Iceland and regards a day at the beach as a hot, sweaty bore. “The only time I like things hot is when I’m having coffee—preferably when it’s cold outside,” he says.
