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Daydreaming really is the key to solving complex problems
The Telegraph: Daydreaming really is the key to solving complex problems, a new study has found. Some of the most important scientific breakthroughs ever made - by everyone from Einstein to Newton - came about as the geniuses behind them allowed their minds to wander. Now research by modern day scientists has shown that mere mortals can also improve their problem-solving ability in the same way. The study showed that people who returned to a difficult task after taking a break and doing an easy task boosted their performance by around 40 per cent.
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Neuroscience: Under Attack
The New York Times: This fall, science writers have made sport of yet another instance of bad neuroscience. The culprit this time is Naomi Wolf; her new book, “Vagina,” has been roundly drubbed for misrepresenting the brain and neurochemicals like dopamine and oxytocin. Earlier in the year, Chris Mooney raised similar ire with the book “The Republican Brain,” which claims that Republicans are genetically different from — and, many readers deduced, lesser to — Democrats. “If Mooney’s argument sounds familiar to you, it should,” scoffed two science writers.
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Sadness And Shopping Are A Bad Mix On Black Friday
Forbes: If Thanksgiving left you sad you may want to consider leaving your credit cards at home before you hit the stores for Black Friday. When it comes to keeping long-term financial consequences in mind, sadder but wiser is just not true. Research, just published in Psychological Science, shows that sadness “made people more myopic, and therefore willing to forgo greater future gains in return for instant gratification.” What the researchers did was induce a sad mood by having subjects watch a short video about a boy’s mentor dying. Then they had subjects make decisions that pit short-term gain against larger long-term gains. The results? Read the whole story: Forbes
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An Indirect Damage of Terror Attacks: Higher Traffic Fatalities
The Atlantic: On Friday, convicted terrorist Adis Medunjanin was sentenced to life in prison for plotting an attack on the New York City subway system several years back. Public transit has been the target of a number of similar efforts in the post-9/11 era: Madrid trains in 2004, London subway and buses in 2005, the Moscow metro in 2010. Fortunately, in the case of Medunjanin and his cohorts, law enforcement spoiled the plan before its execution. Society doesn't need any additional incentive to prevent a terror attack beyond avoiding the tragedy itself. When the focus of such attacks is public transit, however, stopping them doesn't just save the lives directly at stake.
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‘It Was a Dark and Stormy Divorce…’
The Huffington Post: About 2 million men and women go through marital separation every year, and many of those separations end in divorce. These stressful and painful events are known to cause all sorts of problems later on, including serious depression and deteriorating health. Despite this, very little is known about what really works to promote healing after a difficult breakup. One promising intervention is what's known as "expressive writing," which involves disclosing one's deepest thoughts and feelings through daily writing exercises.
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Bothered by Negative, Unwanted Thoughts? Just Throw Them Away
If you want to get rid of unwanted, negative thoughts, try just ripping them up and tossing them in the trash. In a new study, researchers found that when people wrote down their thoughts on a piece of paper and then threw the paper away, they mentally discarded the thoughts as well. The results are published online in the journal Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. On the other hand, people were more likely to use their thoughts when making judgments if they first wrote them down on a piece of paper and tucked the paper in a pocket to protect it.
