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Can Money Buy You Happiness?
NPR: Social scientist Michael Norton researches how money can buy happiness — when you don't spend it on yourself. The key is social spending that benefits not just you, but other people. Michael Norton is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Prior to joining HBS, Professor Norton was a Fellow at the MIT Media Lab and MIT's Sloan School of Management. Read the whole story: NPR
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A Road Trip to the Origins of Our Species
The New York Times: It was on an all-night Capitol Air flight to Brussels, sitting in the back smoking rows with Leon Festinger, playing endless backgammon and consuming Scotch at an alarming rate, that I realized that, whether I liked it or not, I was about to learn a lot about human origins and uniqueness. The year was 1981. Leon, the ingenious and intellectually adventurous social psychologist responsible for the theory of cognitive dissonance, had once again switched fields, this time from visual perception into what amounted to archaeology, and I was his sidekick. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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When Backup Plans Backfire
Backup plans can change the way that a person pursues a goal, as well as the likelihood of achieving it, even if the backup plans are never even used.
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The Supremely Old, Supremely Sharp, Supreme Court
The Atlantic: Justice Antonin Scalia, more than any other Supreme Court justice, set the parameters for the constitutional debates of this era. The sharpness of his mind and the rigor of his jurisprudence were regularly on display up until his passing. As those of us fortunate enough to have directly engaged with him in recent years can attest, up until his last breath, there was no indication that he had dulled in his ability to navigate the incredible intellectual challenges that were his job description. ... But what does the inevitable deterioration of fluid intelligence mean in terms of the ability to work into the golden years? The answer, unsatisfyingly, defies easy generalization.
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How Meditation Changes the Brain and Body
The New York Times: The benefits of mindfulness meditation, increasingly popular in recent years, are supposed to be many: reduced stress and risk for various diseases, improved well-being, a rewired brain. But the experimental bases to support these claims have been few. Supporters of the practice have relied on very small samples of unrepresentative subjects, like isolated Buddhist monks who spend hours meditating every day, or on studies that generally were not randomized and did not include placebo control groups. ... To meditate mindfully demands ‘‘an open and receptive, nonjudgmental awareness of your present-moment experience,’’ says J.
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What Is The Psychological Effect Of Naming Storms?
NPR: Nick Epley at the University of Chicago has been studying the effects of naming inanimate things like storms. He finds that doing so gives them human-like qualities —among them, intentionality. Along with plenty of ice, sleet and snow, much of the country has also been blanketed this winter by an avalanche of names. When winter storms assault us, they now come with names like Hercules, Janus and, the most recent storm, Pax. Here's NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam on why we name winter storms and how those names might affect us. Read the whole story: NPR
