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Michael Norton: How to buy happiness
TedTalk: At TEDxCambridge, Michael Norton shares fascinating research on how money can, indeed buy happiness -- when you don't spend it on yourself. Listen for surprising data on the many ways pro-social spending can benefit you, your work, and (of course) other people. Through clever studies, Michael Norton studies how we feel about what we buy and spend. Watch here: TedTalk
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How to Spot a Scoundrel: Fidgeting and Trust
Imagine the original job interview. The first one ever, back on the prehistoric savannahs of eastern Africa. It wouldn’t have been exactly like a modern job interview, because early humans had no resumes or Linked-In or letters of recommendation to guide them. There was very little in the way of personal or professional reputation to go on, so in that sense the exchange was much trickier. But the fundamental idea was the same: Somehow the interviewer had to judge, in a brief spot of time, if the applicant—a complete stranger—was worthy of trust. Is this a person to do business with, to entrust with your money and your financial future?
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Laura Carstensen: Older people are happier
TedTalk: In the 20th century we added an unprecedented number of years to our lifespans, but is the quality of life as good? Surprisingly, yes! At TEDxWomen psychologist Laura Carstensen shows research that demonstrates that as people get older they become happier, more content, and have a more positive outlook on the world. Laura Carstensen is the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, and has extensively studied the effects on wellbeing of extended lifetimes. Watch here: TedTalk
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What Cocktail Parties Teach Us
The Wall Street Journal: You're at a party. Music is playing. Glasses are clinking. Dozens of conversations are driving up the decibel level. Yet amid all those distractions, you can zero in on the one conversation you want to hear. This ability to hyper-focus on one stream of sound amid a cacophony of others is what researchers call the "cocktail-party effect." Now, scientists at the University of California in San Francisco have pinpointed where that sound-editing process occurs in the brain—in the auditory cortex just behind the ear, not in areas of higher thought.
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Thinking in a Foreign Language Makes Decisions More Rational
Wired: To judge a risk more clearly, it may help to consider it in a foreign language. A series of experiments on more than 300 people from the U.S. and Korea found that thinking in a second language reduced deep-seated, misleading biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are perceived. “Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language as you would in your native tongue?” asked psychologists led by Boaz Keysar of the University of Chicago in an April 18 Psychological Science study. “It may be intuitive that people would make the same choices regardless of the language they are using, or that the difficulty of using a foreign language would make decisions less systematic.
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Imagining the Future Invokes Your Memory
Scientific American: I remember my retirement like it was yesterday. As I recall, I am still working, though not as hard as I did when I was younger. My wife and I still live in the city, where we bicycle a fair amount and stay fit. We have a favorite coffee shop where we read the morning papers and say hello to the other regulars. We don’t play golf. In reality, I’m not even close to retirement. This is just a scenario I must have spun out at some point in the past. There are other future scenarios, but the details aren’t all that important. Notably, all of my futures have a peaceful and contented feel to them.
