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This Was Supposed to Be My Column for New Year’s Day
The New York Times: For the past 5 years, or maybe it’s more like 10, I’ve been meaning to publish a New Year’s Day column offering a bold resolution for the coming year: “The Power of Positive Procrastination.” Well, Jan. 15 is close enough, especially if you still haven’t gotten around to dealing with this year’s resolutions. And you can stop feeling guilty for procrastinating. Science has come up with a defense of your condition. ... “The secret of my incredible energy and efficiency in getting work done is a simple one,” he wrote.
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Being Bored At Work Could Boost Creativity, Study Suggests
The Huffington Post: We've got some surprising news, workers of the world: Being bored at work could actually be . New research presented at the annual meeting of the British Psychological Society Division of Occupational Psychology shows that being bored at work means more daydreaming time -- leading to an increase in creativity. However, more research is needed to see how exactly this creativity manifests. ... The findings have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, so they should be regarded as preliminary. But still, this is hardly the first time the benefits of daydreaming have been revealed in a study.
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Unshakable Humanity: Altruism and Disaster
In May of 2008, a massive earthquake hit China’s Sichuan province. The earthquake measured 8.0 and could be felt as far away as Pakistan, Vietnam and Russia. The shaking lasted a full two minutes and was followed by some 40,000 aftershocks, triggering hundreds of landslides. By the time the earth stopped moving, almost 70,000 were left dead, with another 18,000 missing and more than 300,000 injured. It was one of the deadliest earthquakes ever recorded. These facts are staggering—incomprehensible really. Even people who have experienced some of nature’s wrath must find such fury and human loss unimaginable.
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Studying for a big exam? Use flash cards, not highlighters
Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel: Students studying for big exams may want to put down their neon highlighters and make some flash cards instead. Some of the most popular study strategies — such as highlighting and rereading — don’t show much promise for improving student learning, according to a new report published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. While 10 learning techniques commonly used by students and researched in the report vary widely in effectiveness, two strategies — practice testing and distributed practice — made the grade, receiving the highest overall rating.
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Bilingualism May Keep Older Brains Nimble
LiveScience: Older adults who have spoken two languages since childhood are quicker at switching between cognitive tasks than single-language adults, a new study finds. The bilingual seniors also showed distinct patterns of brain activity not seen in monolingual participants, the researchers added. "This study provides some of the first evidence of an association between a particular cognitively stimulating activity, in this case, speaking multiple languages on a daily basis, and brain function," John Woodard, an aging expert from Wayne State University, who was not involved with the study, said in a statement.
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Psychologists Uncover Hidden Signals of Trust—Using a Robot
Scientific American: “In spite of the hardness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face, I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word." Neville Chamberlain’s first impression of Adolf Hitler can charitably be described as an error in judgment. Rarely do our own miscalculations result in tragedy, yet popular sentiment seems to hold that when it comes to truly trusting others, you just never know. Wolves in sheep’s clothing abound, and prudence demands skepticism. Whether we are deciding on a babysitter, a doctor, or a car, we try to not base our judgments on our first impressions.
