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Two Heads Are Not Better Than One
The Huffington Post: Once we saw the house, we knew that it would be just perfect for our recently blended family. Room for three not quite adult but definitely not young children. Great kitchen. A basement where one could fantasize about happy adolescents (first fantasy) playing pool and ping-pong (second fantasy) while engaging in wholesome evening activities (third fantasy). And office space for two. After all, we had been looking for a new home for months in what felt like a Bataan march through too many other homes. Once we walked through this one, we came, we saw, we put in a contract.
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How to Gain Self Control
Scientific American: We’ve all had that moment: you wanna punch some jerk right in the face. So, what stops us? Well, simply put, self-control. But it turns out each of us has a limited quantity of self-control. Past studies have shown, for example, that stopping yourself from taking a cookie for about an hour is likely to increase your aggression later that day. And there are tricks to increase our stash of control. A new study shows you can practice it, as one would practice any new skill, Read the whole story: Scientific American
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Get Me Out of this Slump! Visual Illusions Improve Sports Performance
One way players might be able to improve their chances at making key shots is by tricking themselves into thinking the goal, the basket, or the target is bigger than it really is.
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Emotion: The Emotion Wars
Psychology Today: Science, just like art, is subject to big shifts in the way we think about ourselves. For the past two decades, psychology has favored "inside" explanations of behavior: Who we are is largely determined by our makeup. We are hostages to our genes. But the cutting edge is now shifting. Evidence is amassing that the environment we inhabit shapes even what we thought was most fixed about ourselves. One orthodoxy of psychology in the past two decades has been that emotions are hardwired into us and their facial display is universal, and thus recognizable, across cultures. We just "read" the emotions that are written on a face.
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Celebrity Psychology: Amanda Bynes drives away from police
Examiner: As a Hollywood star from the TV sitcom What I Like About You alongside Jenny Garth and the musical Hairspray with John Travolta, Amanda Bynes is one celebrity that many fans think is a pretty good girl. With a squeaky clean image, Bynes has been put into a category of celebrities most would not easily visualize as someone that would skip out on the police. After a routine stop for using her cell phone while driving, Amanda drove off and eluded the cops in Los Angeles. While she did turn herself in later that day, she sure gave them a scare. What motived the young actress to do so? Read the whole story: Examiner
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Now, seek the obscure to solve your problems
Yahoo India: A US researcher has come up a new technique that allows people to solve their problems systematically by using innovative ideas. According to Tony McCaffrey, a psychology PhD from the University of Massachusetts, there is a classic obstruction to innovation called 'functional fixedness'. "which is the tendency to fixate on the common use of an object or its parts. It hinders people from solving problems," McCaffrey said. McCaffrey has developed a systematic way of overcoming that obstacle: the "generic parts technique" (GPT). Read the whole story: Yahoo India
