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“Tears of Joy” May Help Us Maintain Emotional Balance
Many life experiences, such as witnessing the birth of a child or finally achieving a long sought-after goal, can lead to what may seem like confusing expressions of emotion, like tears of joy. But new research suggests that these incongruous expressions may serve a fundamental purpose, helping us to maintain emotional balance. The findings are forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “People may be restoring emotional equilibrium with these expressions,” said psychological scientist and lead researchers Oriana Aragon of Yale University.
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Summer-Haters Get Happy as Days Get Shorter
The Wall Street Journal: Many people get the blues as winter sets in. They experience rolling back the clock to end daylight-saving time and commuting home in the dark as a downer. Not so for Travis Hare. “I prefer colder temps and shorter days,” says Mr. Hare, co-principal of a Washington, D.C., marketing and public-relations firm. The 34-year-old hikes in the snow, vacations in Iceland and regards a day at the beach as a hot, sweaty bore. “The only time I like things hot is when I’m having coffee—preferably when it’s cold outside,” he says.
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Why Your Brain Wants To Help One Child In Need — But Not Millions
NPR: Why do people sometimes give generously to a cause — and other times give nothing at all? That's a timely question, because humanitarian groups fighting the Ebola outbreak need donations from people in rich countries. But some groups say they're getting less money than they'd expect from donors despite all the news. Psychologist Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon has some answers that may surprise you. In one study, Slovic told volunteers about a young girl suffering from starvation and then measured how much the volunteers were willing to donate to help her.
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Just Looking at Cash Makes People Selfish and Less Social
The Atlantic: When it comes to money, people aren’t pursuing stacks of green paper or a collection of copper disks—they’re interested in what those objects represent. The pull of money, the economy and most behavioral research agree, is symbolic. But what if the medium of exchange—cash itself—can change the way people behave? A study to be published next month in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology points toward that possibility. Its authors found, through a series of six experiments, that people who were prompted to think about money—literally just shown a picture of bills or coins—were more likely to conceal their emotions than those who viewed non-financial imagery.
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We Are All Confident Idiots
Pacific Standard: Last March, during the enormous South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, the late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! sent a camera crew out into the streets to catch hipsters bluffing. “People who go to music festivals pride themselves on knowing who the next acts are,” Kimmel said to his studio audience, “even if they don’t actually know who the new acts are.” So the host had his crew ask festival-goers for their thoughts about bands that don’t exist. “The big buzz on the street,” said one of Kimmel’s interviewers to a man wearing thick-framed glasses and a whimsical T-shirt, “is Contact Dermatitis.
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Could Subliminal Messages Help Keep Seniors Healthy?
New York Magazine: Aging doesn’t occur in a vacuum. All sorts of factors ranging from genetic influence to support networks can alter what it means to get older and potentially face new, unfamiliar physical and emotional challenges. Andresearch has shown (PDF) that a big part of successfully adapting to these challenges is maintaining a positive attitude about the process.
