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People Anticipate Others’ Genuine Smiles, But Not Polite Smiles
Smile and the world smiles with you -- but new research suggests that not all smiles are created equal. The research shows that people actually anticipate smiles that are genuine but not smiles that are merely polite. The differing responses may reflect the unique social value of genuine smiles. “These findings give us the first clear suggestion that the basic processes that guide responses to reward also play a role in guiding social behavior on a moment-to-moment basis during interactions,” explains psychological scientist and lead researcher Erin Heerey of Bangor University (UK).
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The Myth of ‘Just Do It’
The New York Times: Yogi Berra, the former Major League baseball catcher and coach, once remarked that you can’t hit and think at the same time. Of course, since he also reportedly said, “I really didn’t say everything I said,” it is not clear we should take his statements at face value. Nonetheless, a widespread view — in both academic journals and the popular press — is that thinking about what you are doing, as you are doing it, interferes with performance. The idea is that once you have developed the ability to play an arpeggio on the piano, putt a golf ball or parallel park, attention to what you are doing leads to inaccuracies, blunders and sometimes even utter paralysis.
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Stress delivered straight to your inbox
The Globe and Mail: “Our eating habits have changed radically in recent decades, in at least two distinct ways,” says Pacific Standard magazine. “We increasingly multitask as we consume our meals, munching as we work at our desks or watch television. And, to the dismay of nutritionists, our food has higher concentrations of sugar and salt. New research from the Netherlands suggests the two phenomena may be directly related. A study just published in the journal Psychological Science finds people eating or drinking while mentally distracted require greater concentrations of sweetness, sourness or saltiness to feel satisfied.
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Munching Through Life’s Travails
The Huffington Post: The world is divided into Munchers and Skippers. I'm a Skipper, which means that, when living gets stressful, I stop eating. I don't snack. I skip meals. Munchers, on the other hand, invented comfort food. It doesn't matter whether it's Chunky Monkey or Doritos or cheeseburgers. Calories are taken like a tonic against life's mishaps. Traditionally, Munchers have been viewed as more pathetic than Skippers -- and more of a problem. Feeding on calorie-dense foods shows lack of self-discipline, and leads to unhealthy weight gain. And given our high-stress modern lives, it's likely that anxious munching is contributing to the nation's obesity epidemic.
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Hunger and Hoarding
Suzanne Collins’ futuristic trilogy, The Hunger Games, takes place in Panem, a totalitarian nation of obscene wealth and pervasive poverty. Its twelve districts are all impoverished, but District 12, the coal-mining region formerly called Appalachia, is the poorest of the poor. Citizens struggle to eke out a living in the mines, but hunger is the norm and the unfortunate routinely die of starvation. Panem is the opposite of a welfare state. There is no dole, no safety net—certainly no 47 percent. Indeed, there is no institutional sharing at all.
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Meeting Your Spouse Online May Lead to a Better Marriage
Scientific American: I met my husband at a party in a bygone era. He had no online profile. Neither did I. We didn’t trade email addresses, as neither of us had one of those either. He seemed like a good guy–and a party was as good a venue as any for meeting a future spouse. He still seems like a good guy and I rather doubt I would have done any better if I had dated online (assuming that had been an option). But I guess I’m old fashioned, as a new study suggests that, on average, we can do better if we find our spouse using a computer. In the decades since that long-gone, offline era, people have increasingly been using the Internet to search for compatible partners.
