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Don’t let others stress you out
CNN: When I tell Pam, my stressed-out lawyer friend, that stress is contagious, she seems unimpressed. “I have always kind of suspected that,” she says, “ever since in 'Ghostbusters II,' when the guys discover that people’s nonstop negativity has created an evil slime that threatens humanity. Then they find out the slime reacts to both positive and negative emotions, so they have a bunch of New Yorkers hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’ to it in Central Park or something. And boom! The slime dissolves.” I’m sort of speechless, though the comparison is oddly compelling.
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Progressive Tax Rates Linked To National Happiness: Study
The Huffington Post: Detractors of Warren Buffett take note: The more a country taxes its richest citizens, the happier everyone in that country will be. Such are the findings of a new study, led by University of Virginia psychologist Shigehiro Oishi, which compares 54 different countries and finds a correlation between progressive tax policies -- that is, higher tax rates for higher tax brackets -- and overall contentedness. It may not be the case that a progressive tax system automatically leads to a happier population, however. The report emphasizes that what matters is what governments do with the tax dollars they collect.
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Why we shun creativity in the work place
The Globe and Mail: You come up with a great new idea at work, or at home. Or a political leader actually tries something “new and different” when faced with a previously intractable problem. But then, rather than grateful acceptance, or even a fair hearing, the idea is squashed, ridiculed, or otherwise ignored. Sound familiar? It should. As anyone who has ever suggested a creative solution knows, people often avoid the uncomfortable uncertainty of novel solutions regardless of potential benefit.
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Relationship with mom is crucial for boys
Courier-Journal: A boy’s relationship with his mother changes as he grows up, and the way it changes can affect his behavior when he’s a teen, a new study says. It included 265 mother-son pairs from low-income families in Pittsburgh who were followed from when the son was 5 years old through adolescence. The researchers assessed the level of conflict and warmth between the mothers and sons and other aspects of their lives, including the son’s temperament and behavior, the mother’s relationship with her romantic partner, and the quality of the mother’s parenting.
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9/11 Psychology: Just How Resilient Were We?
TIME: 9/11 was devastating in terms of lives lost — nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks — but it was not physically destructive (with the obvious exception of Ground Zero) on the same massive scale. Since most of New York City remained structurally intact, an intense focus was placed on the psychological needs of its residents (and, to a lesser extent, on residents of Washington, D.C.) One month after 9/11, the National Institute for Mental Health gathered together a group of international experts to figure out how to best help a traumatized population, but as a new report in American Psychologist explains, there was no clear model of what to expect and how to proceed.
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Do Fat CEO Faces Equal Fat Profits?
Time: We generally don’t include the shape of a business exec’s face in our investing advice. But according to a new study, maybe we should. In the November issue of the journal Psychological Science, a new study suggests that CEOs with wider faces achieve much greater financial performance than CEOs with thinner mugs. Before you make your own face, there’s some legitimate science behind it. For the last few years, a number of studies have been published showing that greater facial width-to-height ratio (WHR) is associated with more aggressive behavior in men. Hockey players with wider faces spend more time in the penalty box. And men with higher facial width often feel more powerful.
