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Contemplation: A Healthy State of Mind
Most dieticians will tell us that the first step in achieving a healthy body weight is buying a good bathroom scale. The second is using it, regularly. Knowing our weight keeps us honest, and this basic bit of information is a key motivator for the nutrition and exercise changes needed to stay fit over the long haul. And it’s simple and effortless. Except that it’s not. Many people do not have a scale, and what’s more, do not want one. Or if they have one, they never use it. There are many explanations for such avoidance. Some people hold on to a bygone image of themselves, believing that they are still fit and healthy. They don’t want this cherished delusion shattered.
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That Loving Feeling Takes a Lot of Work
The New York Times: When people fall in love and decide to marry, the expectation is nearly always that love and marriage and the happiness they bring will last; as the vows say, till death do us part. Only the most cynical among us would think, walking down the aisle, that if things don’t work out, “We can always split.” But the divorce rate in the United States is half the marriage rate, and that does not bode well for this cherished institution.
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How Scarcity Leads to Spending
TIME: Will economic uncertainty make you save more — or spend more? The answer may depend on your childhood experience, a new study suggests. The research, published in Psychological Science could help explain why poverty can sometimes be so difficult to escape. In two different experiments, researchers led by Vladas Griskevicius of the University of Minnesota studied people who had been raised either in relative financial comfort in middle or upper class households or had had some childhood experience with poverty.
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Agreed, Baby Pandas Are Cute. But Why?
NPR: Xiao Liwu made his public debut Thursday at the San Diego Zoo. Fans crowded around the exhibit, their camera lenses extended, hoping to catch a glimpse of the 5-month-old giant panda cub. If they're lucky and actually do see the 16-pound panda (his Chinese name means "Little Gift"), there'll be much oooing and aaahing. You'd have to be heartless not to agree that pandas, especially the youngest of them, are as cute as all get-out. Right? But why? Read the whole story: NPR
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Learning and Memory May Play a Central Role in Synesthesia
People with color-grapheme synesthesia experience color when viewing written letters or numerals, usually with a particular color evoked by each grapheme (i.e., the letter ‘A’ evokes the color red). In a new study, researchers Nathan Witthoft and Jonathan Winawer of Stanford University present data from 11 color grapheme synesthetes who had startlingly similar color-letter pairings that were traceable to childhood toys containing magnetic colored letters. Their findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Counseling center cares for people with ‘complicated grief’
The Washington Post: Cindi Day cheered as the bus carrying 6-year-old Tai-Vaughn Moore home from camp pulled up. The sole guardian of her grandson, she hadn’t found it easy to surrender him even for the weekend. But Tai-Vaughn had been acting up in school, and Day hoped the three-day camp for youths who had lost a close relative would help him. She greeted him with a huge grin, asking how he was. ... For decades, much of the literature on bereavement was not based on science, said George Bonanno, a clinical psychology professor at Columbia University. Around the 1980s, researchers finally began studying grief rigorously. The results?
