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A Divine Way to Resist Temptation
The Wall Street Journal: I was raised in a kosher household. Though I never fully understood why I couldn't eat cheeseburgers or pepperoni pizza—the theology still confuses me—I quickly learned to follow the rules. At birthday parties, I always informed the hosts that I preferred my pizza plain. If they forgot, I would just eat the crust. What's odd about such self-restraint is that I was terrible at holding back my childish desires in almost every other way. Even as I skipped the pepperoni, I would often gorge myself on cake. I could deny myself lobster, but I would throw massive tantrums if I didn't get my box of Milk Duds at the movies.
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Frauen erscheinen als Sexobjekte
Der Spiegel: Was sieht jemand beim Blick auf das Foto einer kaum bekleideten oder nackten Frau: einen Menschen oder ein Objekt? Und werden Männer in Badehose oder Unterwäsche anders wahrgenommen? Diesen Fragen sind belgische und US-amerikanische Psychologen in einem Experiment nachgegangen. Im Fachmagazin "Psychological Science" berichten sie, dass sie einen deutlichen Unterschied feststellen konnten, und Frauen wortwörtlich als Sexobjekte wahrgenommen werden.
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Don’t Speak, Memory
TIME: I've always been proud that my columns are 100% accurate, which isn't all that hard since I write only about me. But it turns out that I'm an awful source. I get dates and places wrong. I replace former girlfriends with my lovely wife Cassandra in many stories, despite the fact that after 14 years together it would be far more exciting to do the opposite. I know about these errors because camp friends e-mail me corrections, IMDb.com shows that the movie I thought Cassandra and I went to see together had left theaters before we met, and the mullet photos of me on the Internet prove that I could not have lost my virginity at 17.
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Myopic Misery: The Financial Cost of Sadness
Huffington Post: Nobody likes to feel bad. Sadness saps our energy and motivation. Melancholy wrecks our health and invites disease. Misery leaves us -- well, miserable. Yet many experts believe that these negative emotions have an upside, that they clarify our thinking and foster more deliberate and careful decision making. Some even say that sadness is a reality check on unwarranted optimism and self-regard. That's the so-called "sadder but wiser" theory. But is it true? Isn't it equally as plausible that sadness and melancholy sabotage some kinds of thinking, and lead to questionable choices and judgments?
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The Benefits of Being Bilingual
Wired: Samuel Beckett, born in a suburb of Dublin in 1906, was a native English speaker. However, in 1946 Beckett decided that he would begin writing exclusively in French. After composing the first draft in his second language, he would then translate these words back into English. This difficult constraint – forcing himself to consciously unpack his own sentences – led to a burst of genius, as many of Beckett’s most famous works (Malloy, Malone Dies, Waiting for Godot, etc.) were written during this period.
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Notre Dame Psychology Students Take on Wikipedia Challenge
Today @ Notre Dame: Wikipedia is often in the top results when people search for information online, but it isn’t always the most credible source. Enter a group of advanced Notre Dame undergraduates in psychology who have taken on the challenge to update, correct, or, in some cases, write new entries for the online encyclopedia. It’s all part of the new Association for Psychological Science (APS) Wikipedia Initiative—and Assistant Professor Gerald Haeffel’s “Science and Pseudoscience in Psychology” class is one of a select few across the country selected to participate. “We know that a lot of people get their science information from Wikipedia,” Haeffel says.
