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Ways to Say ‘No’ More Effectively
The Wall Street Journal: Lesley Ronson Brown knew the woman on the phone asking her to serve on the board of a nonprofit was making a good point, detailing how the group would benefit from her leadership skills. Ms. Brown politely explained that she was busy with other volunteer activities and wanted to spend more time with her family. The woman kept pleading. So Ms. Brown did the only thing she could think to do: She climbed up on the chair in her office—to feel bigger and more powerful, she says—and "practically growled" her answer. "I was trying to say 'no' in a lower-octave, tall brunette voice," says Ms. Brown, who is petite (and was blonde at the time).
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Can Gratitude Reduce Costly Impatience?
The human mind tends to devalue future rewards compared to immediate ones -- a phenomenon that often leads to favoring immediate gratification over long-term wellbeing. As a consequence, patience has long been recognized to be a virtue. And indeed, the inability to resist temptation underlies a host of problems ranging from credit card debt and inadequate savings to unhealthy eating and drug addiction. The prevailing view for reducing costly impatience has emphasized the use of willpower. That is, emotions are to be tamped down in order to avoid irrational impulses for immediate gain.
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Persons With Drug Addictions Who Live in the Moment May Benefit Most From Certain Treatments
Drug-dependent people who least take the future into account may, paradoxically, be the ones to benefit the most from certain treatments, a clinical study suggests.
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Making Room for Wonder in Children’s Lives
The Huffington Post: In her new book Thrive, Arianna Huffington writes of the importance of "making room" for wonder -- a change in how we measure success that would have an especially great impact on the lives of our children. Right now, parents and teachers expend a lot of energy getting kids to pay attention, concentrate, and focus on the task in front of them. What we adults don't do, according to University of Southern California education professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, is teach children the value of the more diffuse mental activity that characterizes our inner lives: wondering, remembering, reflecting.
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The Science And Poetry Behind A Semi-Famous Sleep Talker
NPR: Over the years, a couple of other McGregor's sleep-talk recordings have been released. The forthcoming one has an introduction by a Harvard Medical School psychologist and frankly, upon listening to several of these recordings, I was both surprised and skeptical so we ran them past a sleep researcher who happens to be another Harvard Med School psychologist and we asked what did he make of them. So here we are joined by two Harvard Med School psychologists. First, Dr. Deirdre Barrett who is contributing the new introduction. Welcome to the program. DEIRDRE BARRETT: Hi there. SIEGEL: And Dr. Robert Stickgold. ROBERT STICKGOLD: Pleasure to be here. SIEGEL: Let's hear from Dr.
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Your Unconscious Mind Is Better Than You Are at Detecting Lies
Pacific Standard: Can you tell if someone is lying to you? Newly published research suggests you actually have that ability—at least to an extent—but accessing it is a different story. In two experiments, researchers from the University of California-Berkeley found people are better at detecting deception using indirect methods that tap into their unconscious minds. They conclude our conscious minds, hobbled by commonly held misbeliefs, tend to trip us up.
