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The Surprising Secret to Breaking Through a Mental Block, According to Science
When you're wrestling with a tough decision or you're trying to solve a hard problem, you might assume you just need to think harder. But concentrating harder won't force a 'eureka moment' when you're experiencing a mental block. Instead, your best option might be to step away from your project and busy yourself with another task. Clean the house, pay some bills, or take a nap and you just might experience a spark of genius as the solution seems to magically come to you. --- In a 2010 study published in Psychological Science, researchers examined how an incubation period affects choices.
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Do This One Simple Thing to Fall Asleep Faster
If you lie awake at night because your mind won’t stop racing, taking five minutes before bed to write out a to-do list for the next day might help you get more shuteye. In a study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, people who wrote down future tasks they wanted to accomplish fell asleep faster than those who wrote about things they’d done that day. Research has shown that writing down worries, in general, can reduce stress levels and help people perform tasks more efficiently. But psychologists at Baylor University wanted to see if writing down future-focused thoughts, specifically, could help people sleep.
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Darker Skies, Darker Behaviors
Air pollution costs the world approximately $5 trillion a year, or about 7 percent of global GDP, according to the World Bank. This cost is measured in a range of metrics, including lives lost and declines in health and productivity. Such pollution can be seen, felt, smelled, and even tasted. It stings and blurs the eyes, blackens the lungs, and shortens the breath. Even in the United States, about 142 million Americans still reside in counties with dangerously polluted air. Yet air pollution affects more than just our health and our natural environment: Our research shows that air pollution also has a moral cost.
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Force Overtime? Or Go for the Win?
On Jan. 16, 2016, with time expiring in the fourth quarter of a playoff game between the Green Bay Packers and the Arizona Cardinals, the Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers completed an improbable Hail Mary touchdown pass to bring the Packers within 1 point of the Cardinals. The Packers then had a choice to make. They could kick an extra point, which would send the game into overtime. Or they could go for a 2-point conversion, which though more difficult would win the game. Ultimately, the Packers chose to tie the game with an extra point. Then their fans watched in dismay as the Cardinals promptly scored a touchdown in overtime and won the game.
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Why do fans riot after a win? The science behind Philadelphia’s Super Bowl chaos.
Fires in the streets. Smashed windows. Flipped cars. Light poles toppled by alcohol-fueled crowds. Philadelphia awoke this morning after the triumph of Super Bowl Sunday to a city in disarray and this vexing question: What is it about sports that makes fans riot? Why do fans care so intensely about their teams? What is going on in their brains after a win or loss? What circumstances make a riot more likely? --- The effect manifests itself physically. Fans’ testosterone levels often increase after their team wins and decrease when they lose, according to some studies.
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The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery
Beneath the bland veneer of supermarket automation lurks an ugly truth: There’s a lot of shoplifting going on in the self-scanning checkout lane. But don’t call it shoplifting. The guys in loss prevention prefer “external shrinkage.” Self-checkout theft has become so widespread that a whole lingo has sprung up to describe its tactics. Ringing up a T-bone ($13.99/lb) with a code for a cheap ($0.49/lb) variety of produce is “the banana trick.” If a can of Illy espresso leaves the conveyor belt without being scanned, that’s called “the pass around.” “The switcheroo” is more labor-intensive: Peel the sticker off something inexpensive and place it over the bar code of something pricey.
