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Days Of Our Lives, One Day At A Time
Anyone who has spent any time around the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous has heard the phrase “stinkin’ thinkin.’” This folksy expression refers to certain attitudes and thought patterns—blaming, self-pity, negativity in general—that threaten the recovering alcoholic’s emotional sobriety and could, if unchecked, lead to relapse. Not every recovering alcoholic chooses AA, but every recovering alcoholic is at risk of picking up a drink if such destructive thinking goes unchecked. Happily, for those seeking an alternative to 12-step programs, there is a well validated therapeutic approach with the same goals and similar tactics.
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Why We Feel Others’ Pain — Or Don’t
When the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped nearly 300 teenage girls from a schoolhouse last month, the world responded with an outpouring of undiluted emotion—shock, outrage, fear, and most of all deep sympathy for the victims and their families. It was impossible not to feel the suffering of these innocent, helpless girls in the hands of their cruel jihadist captors. Well, maybe not impossible. Right-wing commentator Ann Coulter showed not a trace of empathy, as she chose instead to poke fun at a Twitter campaign to raise awareness of the victims’ plight. While the world’s heart went out to the hostages, Coulter responded with a display of callous insensitivity.
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Read, Kids, Read
The New York Times: Late last year, neuroscientists at Emory University reported enhanced neural activity in people who’d been given a regular course of daily reading, which seemed to jog the brain: to raise its game, if you will. ... Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, framed it as a potentially crucial corrective to the rapid metabolism and sensory overload of digital technology. He told me that it can demonstrate to kids that there’s payoff in “doing something taxing, in delayed gratification.” A new book of his, “Raising Kids Who Read,” will be published later this year.
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The Anatomy of Everyday Hatred
It’s hard to outdo Medea for raw hatred. Thrown over by her husband Jason for another woman, the mythic sorceress takes revenge by poisoning her rival and, just for good measure, her rival’s father. Then, just to make sure that Jason comprehends the enormity of her wrath, she murders their two sons in cold blood. Now that’s hate—and probably a lot of other emotions as well, including jealousy and humiliation and anger and disgust. Scientists and poets have long been fascinated by intense, negative emotions such as Medea’s, but surprisingly there is no overarching theory of hatred. Who hates whom, and why? What do we mean when we say, I hate? And what do we do about it?
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Sense of Purpose Lengthens Life
Pacific Standard: How’s that search for a purpose in life coming? Are you finding frustration rather than fulfillment? Well, if friends or family members suggest you let it go, don’t let them dissuade you. If your quest is successful, you’ll probably outlive them. That’s the implication of new research, which provides additional evidence of a link between having a sense of purpose and enjoying greater longevity.
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Personal Judgments Are Swayed by Group Opinion, but Only for 3 Days
We all want to feel like we’re free-thinking individuals, but there’s nothing like the power of social pressure to sway an opinion. New research suggests that people do change their own personal judgments so that they fall in line with the group norm, but the change only seems to last about 3 days. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Our findings suggest that exposure to others' opinions does indeed change our own private opinions -- but it doesn’t change them forever,” says psychological scientist and study author Rongjun Yu of South China Normal University.
