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Why do jokes sometimes fall flat?
The Globe and Mail: Laughter may be the best medicine. But how do you administer it? Scientists have long recognized the wide-ranging health benefits of humour, from reducing stress and improving morale to even decreasing the risk of cardiovascular disease. Yet pinpointing what actually makes things funny has been elusive thus far. At the University of Colorado, Boulder, marketing and psychology professor Peter McGraw has been mulling over this puzzle since 2008 and at last, he and his fellow researchers have put a finger on an answer: Humour equals tragedy plus time. Read the whole story: The Globe and Mail
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Shifting the focus from IQ and test scores to traits of perseverance, curiosity, and grit for long term success in kids
NBC: In the guest spot today is contributing writer of the New York Magazine is Paul Tough, he's author of "How Children Succeed". He said character traits and not IQ determine success in life. Hopefully he'll reassure me I'm somewhat of a good mom. Talk about grit. What is it and how do we foster it in our kids? Grit is this idea that a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania named Angela Duckworth invented as a psychological trait. She defines it as passion, perseverance and the pursuit of a passion. It's about having self-discipline but having a real goal and not letting any obstacles stand in the way. That's a challenge for a lot of kids. How do we get our kids to have grit?
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Boredom has more to do with you than the situation
NBC: It creeps up on you as you sit at your desk. You yawn, scan the web, check Facebook but still the ennui lingers. At some point almost every day we feel bored, at least for a little while. We’ve all experienced that feeling of listlessness, but what is boredom? Is it not having something exciting to do? Is it being unable to pay attention to what you’re doing? One team of Canadian researchers was apparently interested enough in boredom to find out. “Intuitively, it is pretty clear that boredom is a common human experience and little research has been done to bear out that fact,” says John Eastwood, an associate professor of psychology at York University in Toronto.
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More than Just ‘Zoning Out’ – Psychological Science Examines the Cognitive Processes Underlying Mind Wandering
It happens innocently enough: One minute you’re sitting at your desk, working on a report, and the next minute you’re thinking about how you probably need to do laundry and that you want to try the new restaurant down the street. Mind wandering is a frequent and common occurrence. And while mind wandering in certain situations – in class, for example – can be counterproductive, some research suggests that mind wandering isn’t necessarily a bad thing. New research published in the journals of the Association for Psychological Science explores mind wandering in various contexts, examining how mind wandering is related to cognitive processes involved in working memory and executive control.
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If there’s no spectrum of colours, is the result white noise?
Times Higher Education: The study of prejudice and discrimination has been one of the cornerstones of social psychology since the 1950s. But new research suggests that as well as studying discrimination, social psychologists may engage in it themselves. In a paper in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers from Tilburg University find a striking - and perhaps concerning - relationship between the political ideology of social psychologists (who are typically liberal or left wing) and a willingness to discriminate against their politically conservative (right-wing) colleagues.
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It’s Not Me, It’s You
The New York Times: WE’VE all been there: you feel especially smart and funny when talking to a particular person, only to feel hopelessly unintelligent and inarticulate in the presence of another. You’re not imagining things. Experiments show that when people report feeling comfortable with a conversational partner, they are judged by those partners and by observers as actually being more witty. It’s just one example of the powerful influence that social factors can have on intelligence.
