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Rumor has it: Gossip can actually be good for you
Mashable: Let’s face it: gossips get a bad rap. Smugly looking down from a moral high ground — and secure in the knowledge that we don’t share their character flaw — we often dismiss those who are obsessed with the doings of others as shallow. Indeed, in its rawest form, gossip is a strategy used by individuals to further their own reputations and interests at the expense of others. Studies that I have conducted confirm that gossip can be used in cruel ways for selfish purposes. Read the whole story: Mashable
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Early Poverty Disrupts Link Between Hunger and Eating
How much you eat when you’re not really hungry may depend on how well off your family was when you were a child, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the
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Psychologists Analyzed a Big Collection of Condemned Inmates’ Last Words
New York Magazine: It’s a strange and uncomfortable exercise: Imagine you’re about to be executed, and you’re given the opportunity to make a final statement. What would your last words be? To psychologists who study how humans cope with fear and death, condemned inmates’ final statements are — setting aside the ick factor — a rich potential source of information. There are few other situations in which you can hear the thoughts of someone who knows they will be dead in a few minutes. In a new paper in Frontiers in Psychology, the researchers Dr. Sarah Hirschmüller and Dr.
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The profound power of loneliness
NSF: Loneliness is as close to universal as experiences come. Almost everyone has felt isolated, even rejected. But the power of loneliness -- its potential for causing depression and other serious health problems as well as its surprising role in keeping humans safe from harm -- may be more profound than researchers had previously presumed, says neuroscience researcher John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago. Cacioppo has spent nearly three decades exploring the social nature of the human brain, working to find the mechanisms behind traits such as loneliness, empathy, synchrony and emotional contagion.
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Happy Thoughts Can Make You Sad
Pacific Standard: The secret to success, we are sometimes told, is the power of positive thinking. In fact, there's a famous book devoted to that idea called, appropriately, The Power of Positive Thinking, and there's a similarly themed book called The Secret. But there's another secret, according to new research: Fantasizing about a wonderful, happy future may actually make depression symptoms worse in the long run. It's not that positive thinking is entirely bad for you, psychologists Gabriele Oettingen, Doris Mayer, and Sam Portnow write in Psychological Science. Indeed, in the short run, there's some evidence that daydreaming about good things can curtail symptoms of depression.
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Speed reading slows comprehension, study says
The Boston Globe: In July 2007, six-time World Speed Reading Champion Anne Jones read the final Harry Potter novel in 47 minutes flat, whizzing through 4,200 words per minute. Most people read about 200 to 400 words per minute. The idea of improving that rate is tantalizing: Imagine zipping through a novel over lunch, or clearing your inbox in minutes. ... The review, published last month in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, was led by UCSD cognitive psychologist Keith Rayner, who spent more than four decades studying the process of reading. Read the whole story: The Boston Globe
