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Cursing kids: Are parents to blame?
The Sunday Telegraph: SONGS, the internet and television are full of it, but it seems it's mum and dad who make the rules on swearing. Kids are swearing earlier and more prolifically than ever before - and it is more to do with mimicking their parents than being influenced by the media. True, an increasing level of swearing is everywhere now - on the radio in the songs our kids sing along to and on the TV shows being aired at "family-friendly" times - but an ongoing US study is pointing the finger of blame at mums and dads. Early results have found that swearing starts as early as the age of two and has set in between three and four.
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Feeling Depressed? This May Be the Thing You Need to Feel Happier (Hint: It’s Not Money)
Glamour: If someone handed you a big pile of cash right this second, would you be happy? OK, I admit, I would hardly be weeping into my breakfast if this happened to me--but bear with my entirely-hypothetical example for a second, because a new study is showing that money doesn't actually seem to make people happier at all. But this does... It's respect (Aretha had it right all along!). According to a study in the journal Psychological Science, being respected and admired by your peers and colleagues will give you a greater feeling of happiness than having wealth or a higher socioeconomic status.
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Investing in Karma by Doing Good Deeds
For so many important outcomes in life – applying for jobs, waiting for medical test results – there comes a point when you just have to sit back and hope for the best. But that doesn’t mean we always behave that way. New research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that even when an outcome is out of our control we often act as though we can still get on the good side of fate by doing good deeds.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about new research using electrophysiological recording methods recently published in Psychological Science. Electrophysiological Examination of Embodiment in Vision and Action Jeremy Goslin, Thomas Dixon, Martin H. Fischer, Angelo Cangelosi, and Rob Ellis This study examined the link between the visual properties of objects and the motor actions associated with those objects. Participants viewed objects with handles facing leftward or rightward and answered questions about the objects by pressing buttons with their left or right hand. In some cases, the button push corresponded with the direction of the handle (congruent), and in other cases it did not (incongruent).
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This column will change your life: the mind-body connection
The Guardian: In the 1988 comedy Big, you may recall, a 12-year-old boy is transported into the body of Tom Hanks – a nightmarish twist on Kafka's Metamorphosis, in which the protagonist gets off comparatively lightly by being transported into the body of a giant beetle. Neither story's believable, of course, but as the psychologist Paul Bloom points out, what's interesting is that they don't strike us as meaningless, either: on some level, we can imagine how it might feel to wake up in another body. That's because most of us are what philosophers call "dualists": intuitively, we think of mind and body as two different entities, neither reducible to the other.
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Erst abschalten, dann aufdrehen (Turn off first, then turn on)
Suddeutsche Zeitung: Alles ist zu viel. Immer. Die Stapel auf dem Schreibtisch wachsen stetig in die Höhe, werden umsortiert, hin und her geschoben und erinnern den Büromenschen doch nur ans tägliche Scheitern. Wieder die eigenen Ansprüche verfehlt, wieder nicht alle Mails beantwortet. Nach Dienstschluss fällt dann zwar die Bürotür ins Schloss, doch die Arbeit begleitet viele Menschen nach Hause und ins Privatleben. Das E-Mail-Postfach lässt sich auch auf dem Smartphone checken, während die Kinder die Zähne putzen. Am Projekt lässt sich auch am Wochenende feilen.
