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Increase Savings with a Cyclical Mindset Towards Time
Lifehacker: Think of time as a set of cyclical experiences instead of a linear goal-oriented approach. That shift in your mindset could end up increasing your short-term personal savings, according to findings published in the journal Psychological Science. People who think about savings in linear terms may be overly optimistic, assuming they can always save more down the road. A cyclical mindset, on the other hand, encourages people to think of life as a series of interconnected recurring experiences.
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Dare to be an optimist!
The Globe and Mail: It’s easy to overdose on the news. Take too much, and you’ll swear the human race is in terminal decline. Today, we interrupt our regular programming of doom and gloom to offer you an antidote – a cheery list of ways in which the world is reported to be getting better and better, or at least not much worse. Don’t worry. Be happy for a change! The usual news cycle will resume all too soon. ... Age brings an increase in well-being, according to a study in Psychological Science, although nobody is quite sure why. Maybe it’s maturity. Maybe it’s changes in our brain chemistry. Or maybe we just don’t give a darn any more.
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Why Does Music Aid in Memorization?
The Wall Street Journal: The words to a holiday song bubble up to the surface of the brain, even decades since last hearing the tune. Yet recalling a bank-account password can put the mind in a twist. Neuroscientists have long debated the brain mechanisms related to memory, but they agree on one thing: Information set to music is among the easiest to remember. One expert, Henry L. Roediger III, professor of psychology at the Memory Lab at Washington University in St. Louis, explains how songs easily stick in the mind. The hippocampus and the frontal cortex are two areas in the brain associated with memory and they process millions of pieces of information every day.
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Science: A Laughing Matter?
NPR: The Guardian recently published an amusing compilation of science jokes solicited from a variety of scientists. They range from classics you may have come across, like these: A psychoanalyst shows a patient an inkblot, and asks him what he sees. The patient says: "A man and woman making love." The psychoanalyst shows him a second inkblot, and the patient says: "That's also a man and woman making love." The psychoanalyst says: "You are obsessed with sex." The patient says: "What do you mean I am obsessed? You are the one with all the dirty pictures." There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary, and those who don't.
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How You Practice Matters for Learning a Skill Quickly
Practice alone doesn’t make perfect, but learning can be optimized if you practice in the right way, according to new research based on online gaming data from more than 850,000 people. The research, led by psychological scientist Tom Stafford of the University of Sheffield (UK), suggests that the way you practice is just as important as how often you practice when it comes to learning quickly. The new findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Stafford and Michael Dewar from The New York Times Research and Development Lab analyzed data from 854,064 people playing an online game called Axon.
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Zyklisches Denken hilft beim Sparen (Cyclical thinking helps savings)
ORF Austria: Weihnachten ist nicht gerade die beste Zeit, um sich Gedanken übers Sparen zu machen. Während das Weihnachtsgeld direkt in Geschenke, Punsch und Skiausflüge investiert wird, schaffen es die Wenigsten, noch ein paar Ersparnisse ins neue Jahr zu retten. Dennoch: Die Österreicher wollen sparen. Laut einer Umfrage der Erste Bank liegt der durchschnittlich geplante Betrag für Neu- und Wiederveranlagung für die nächsten zwölf Monate bei 5.200 Euro - das sind 900 Euro mehr, als die Menschen noch vor einem Jahr angegeben hatten. Read the whole story: ORF Austria
