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Slamming the fridge: Trumping the booze bias
Imagine you’re at an informal social gathering, and you wander into the kitchen in search of a cold Coke. You open the refrigerator, but there are no soft drinks to be found. Instead, you face a fridge packed with cases of beer and icy quarts of vodka. How do you react? Well, if you’re like most people, you think, “Damn. No Coke,” and look elsewhere or forget it. But if you’re an alcoholic, your reaction—your rapid, visceral reaction—would likely be quite different. You’d be drawn in. Your memory would instantly call up past associations with liquor, and you might even feel a craving—even if you haven’t had a drink in a long time.
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The Partner Paradox: ‘Outsourcing’ Self-discipline
My wife and I go to spinning class a couple mornings a week. It’s something we like to do together, and I feel like I benefit from having a regular workout partner. Some days I’m just lazy, or I don’t want to venture out in the pre-dawn cold, but having a supportive partner motivates me. She bolsters my self-discipline when it flags. Or does she? Is it possible that having a supportive partner might have the opposite and paradoxical effect, actually undermining effort and commitment to health and fitness goals over the long haul?
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Emotions by the roomful
I have a friend who sucks the air out of the room whenever he comes around. He is so blustery and self-absorbed that people don’t interact with him; they capitulate. I also have friends who by their mere presence light up the room, raising the spirits of everyone gathered. I know people who cast a pall over the group and drag it down; others who have a calming effect on gatherings. These are all caricatures, of course. Nobody can sway the emotions of an entire room, energizing or subduing or infuriating every member of the group. After all, each of us has his or her own emotional make-up, which is surely more powerful than the mere presence of another person.
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He loves me, he loves me not: The thrill of uncertainty
Here’s a Valentine’s Day scenario: You’ve just been on a first date with a woman you find attractive and intelligent, and things went well—at least from your point of view. The conversation was comfortable, and you share some tastes in books and politics. You’re still savoring the pleasure of the experience when you run into a mutual friend, who reports some good news: Your date really had a good time, too, and is looking forward to seeing you again soon. Or your mutual friend hems and haws and finally shares that the woman liked you “well enough”—which anyone can translate as “bored to tears.” Or—yet another scenario—your mutual friend leaves you dangling.
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The Neurology of Schadenfreude
An experiment involving fans of Major League Baseball’s most intense rivals unearths a particularly troubling aspect of finding pleasure in others’ pain.
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The Myth of Joyful Parenthood
Raising children is hard, and any parent who says differently is lying. Parenting is emotionally and intellectually draining, and it often requires professional sacrifice and serious financial hardship. Kids are needy and demanding from the moment of their birth to... well, forever. Don't get me wrong. I love my children dearly, and can't imagine my life without them. But let's face the facts: Study after study has shown that parents, compared to adults without kids, experience lower emotional well-being -- fewer positive feelings and more negative ones -- and have unhappier marriages and suffer more from depression.
