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Mindfulness Helps Us Understand Our True Personalities, Study Says
The Huffington Post: It's easy to have blind spots when examining our own selves and personalities. After all, it's incredibly difficult to judge ourselves in an objective manner. But a new study suggests the best way to really get to know ourselves -- without help from rose-colored glasses -- is through mindfulness. The study, published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, shows just how mindfulness can help us really know ourselves, without the negative or positive bias. This is important because "blind spots" in knowing ourselves can spell trouble.
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Good News Beats Bad on Social Networks
The New York Times: BAD NEWS SELLS. If it bleeds, it leads. No news is good news, and good news is no news. Those are the classic rules for the evening broadcasts and the morning papers, based partly on data (ratings and circulation) and partly on the gut instincts of producers and editors. Wars, earthquakes, plagues, floods, fires, sick children, murdered spouses — the more suffering and mayhem, the more coverage. But now that information is being spread and monitored in different ways, researchers are discovering new rules.
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People perceive future events closer than past
Business Standard: People perceive events in the future as closer than those in the past, as it helps them to approach, avoid or otherwise cope with the events they encounter, a new study has found. Researchers suggest that the illusions that influence how we perceive movement through space also influence our perception of time. The findings provide evidence that our experiences of space and time have even more in common than previously thought.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science. Sleep Consolidation of Interfering Auditory Memories in Starlings Timothy P. Brawn, Howard C. Nusbaum, and Daniel Margoliash In this study, the authors examined the effect of sleep on the consolidation of starlings' memories. Starlings were trained and tested on two similar classification tasks (Task A and Task B). After training on Task B, they were given a final test on Task A. Training and testing on Task B and the final test on Task A occurred before or after a period of sleep.
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Research Explores Links Between Physical and Emotional Pain Relief
Though we all desire relief -- from stress, work, or pain -- little is known about the specific emotions underlying relief. New research from the Association for Psychological Science explores the psychological mechanisms associated with relief that occurs after the removal of pain, also known as pain offset relief. This new research shows that healthy individuals and individuals with a history of self-harm display similar levels of relief when pain is removed, which suggests that pain offset relief may be a natural mechanism that helps us to regulate our emotions.
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Why We’re So Irrational When It Comes to Tax Refunds
TIME: Think about it: A tax refund is just that — a refund of your own hard-earned money. It’s not a gift or a stroke of good fortune. The problem is that most people don’t look at tax refunds this way. Most Americans—a full 75%—receive refunds after filing their taxes. In other words, most Americans have too much money withheld from their paychecks. More than half of Americans—58%, to be exact—say they intentionally plan to receive a refund each year. Understandably, people do so to avoid an unexpected tax payment come April 15, with the idea that it’s better to withhold a bit more to be on the safe side.