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The more money we have, the fewer problems we see
The Washington Post: “Money doesn’t buy happiness” is a cliche for a reason. The Nobel laureate psychologist/economist Daniel Kahneman and Princeton economist Angus Deaton have found that “emotional well-being” (that is, what emotions people report themselves as having felt the previous day) maxes out at around $75,000 of annual income, even though peoples’ evaluations of how well their lives are going rise indefinitely with income. “We conclude,” Kahneman and Deaton write, “that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness.” But this kind of analysis can be problematic when it’s used to compare whole societies, rather than individual people.
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Tips For Improving Your Teens’ Sleep Schedule
The Wall Street Journal: Many parents wrestle with helping their teenagers get enough sleep, especially when high school classes start before dawn. Battling early school start times and teens’ changing body clocks, which pressure them to fall asleep later, can be overwhelming for parents. I interviewed experts and parents for today’s “Work & Family” column on groggy teens, and they offered some helpful tips. Few teens want parents setting their bedtimes; my own adolescents long resisted my requests to stop texting or Web-surfing late at night. But educating teens on how sleep loss damages health, energy and appearance can encourage them to set their own limits, parents say.
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Study: People Who Wait to Have Sex Are ‘Less Dissatisfied’ in Marriage
The Atlantic: PROBLEM: A lot of "marriage promotion" and youth health movements are predicated on notions of how adolescent sexual gallivanting influences romantic/marital relationships as adults. The dominant notion is that starting earlier means problems later. But there's more to it. Some of what we've heard from previous research: Having sex at younger ages is associated with earlier marriage and cohabitation, more divorce, and more extra-marital pregnancy. METHODOLOGY: Dr.
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Reasoning Is Sharper in a Foreign Language
Scientific American Mind: The language we use affects the decisions we make, according to a new study. Participants made more rational decisions when money-related choices were posed in a foreign language that they had learned in a classroom setting than when they were asked in a native tongue. To study how language affects reasoning, University of Chicago psychologists looked at a well-known phenomenon: people are more risk-averse when an impersonal decision (such as which vaccine to administer to a population) is presented in terms of a potential gain than when it is framed as a potential loss even when the outcomes are equivalent.
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New Research on Aging and Cognition From Psychological Science
Read about new research on aging and cognition published in Psychological Science. Stereotype Threat Strengthens Automatic Recall and Undermines Controlled Processes in Older Adults Marie Mazerolle, Isabelle Régner, Pauline Morisset, François Rigalleau, and Pascal Huguet Older people perform worse on memory tasks when they think they will be stereotypically judged. One theory about this says that stereotypes impair older adults' working memory, while another theory suggests that stereotypes increase activation of their prepotent responses, which are often incorrect.
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Take Control! Exploring How Self-Discipline Works and How We Might Boost It
Converging scientific evidence – not to mention a great deal of life experience – tells us that self-control is an important ability. It helps us keep our cool, get things done, and resist the things that tempt us. Scientists believe that gaining a clearer understanding of how self-control works could provide critical insights into addressing some of the large-scale problems facing society today, including obesity and addiction. Numerous studies have found evidence for the idea of self-control as a limited resource, but emerging research suggests that this model may not tell the whole story.
