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When We Use Fate As A Scapegoat
The Huffington Post: Making decisions can be difficult, and making a hard decision can up the stress even more. A new study suggests that when we have an especially hard decision to make, we're more likely to use the belief in fate as a coping mechanism. The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests that believing that outcomes are out of our control is a coping mechanism to help us live with our decisions. Researchers from Duke University conducted two experiments to analyze the relationship between decision making and belief in fate. Read the whole story: The Huffington Post
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The Dark Psychology of Being a Good Comedian
The Atlantic: Immediately after 9/11, comedy ground to a halt. The Daily Show went off the air for nine days. Saturday Night Live, whose 27th season started 18 days later, featured a somber cold-open with Lorne Michaels asking New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, "Can we be funny?" The staffers of The Onion, the satirical paper that had just relocated to New York, weren’t sure how to answer that question. Even three weeks after the attack, the comedian Gilbert Gottfried was publicly hissed at for joking that he was taking a flight that would make a stop at the Empire State Building. ... The Onion’s triumph reflects McGraw’s long-held theory that comedy is equal parts darkness and light.
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Reporter turns in article about procrastination on time
PBS: While writing this article, I have engaged in the following activities: checked Facebook more than 35 times, watched 10 totally unrelated YouTube clips and browsed BuzzFeed. And I can’t even count the number of times I opened my email. In other words, I procrastinated on a story about procrastination. What was behind these overwhelming urges to do anything but write this story? And how much control did I have over my procrastination? Was I hardwired to put things off until the last minute? We all procrastinate. We delay things we know we shouldn’t — then scramble to get them done.
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Open-Sourcing a Treatment for Cancer
The New Yorker: Elana Simon was given a diagnosis of a rare form of liver cancer at the age of twelve. Six years later, a few months shy of her high-school graduation, she is not only a survivor but a certified cancer researcher: today, she published an article about her disease, fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma, in Science, one of the world’s most important scientific journals. One of the unique issues that Simon and others with extremely rare illnesses face is that there’s often not enough data to know exactly how to treat them.
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Are More Eccentric Artists Perceived As Better Artists?
NPR: Think for a moment about an artist who is really out there in some way. Maybe a musician comes to mind, somebody like Lady Gaga or a painter like Salvador Dali. New research now asks whether you like such artists because of their art or because they conform to a mental stereotype of how artists are supposed to behave. ... But this is the first time I've seen empirical evidence that shows that being eccentric has a measurable effect on our judgments of art and artists. I spoke with Eric Igou. He's at the University of Limerick in Ireland and along with his co-author Wijnand Van Tilburg, he examined the effect that being eccentric has on our perceptions of art.
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17 Signs You’re An Overachiever
The Huffington Post: "I just don't know how he/she manages to do it all!" If people are always saying this about you, you may be an overachiever. But while the title of "overachiever" often has a positive connotation -- think back to your elementary school days, when being an overachiever basically meant being the teacher's pet -- it's not always all it's cracked up to be. Overachievers are more likely, for instance, to feel anxious. And their motivations for, well, over-achieving, often stem from the need to avoid negative judgment, explains Robert Arkin, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at The Ohio State University. Read the whole story: The Huffington Post
