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Bad Habits? My Future Self Will Deal With That
The New York Times: I’VE been wanting to change some of my longstanding habits that I’m not so fond of. But I think I’ve discovered why this can be so difficult. It’s how we think of our future selves. Now, I know this sounds kind of weird, but I’ve found some research showing that many of us don’t have the incentive to eat healthy or save money or add to our retirement accounts because we think of ourselves in the future as someone different altogether. In fact, a future self can seem to be this annoying other person who wants to prevent you from having fun in the present.
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Two Heads Are Not Always Better Than One
From the corporate boardroom to the kitchen table, important decisions are often made in collaboration. But are two—or three or five—heads better than one? Not always, according to new research from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “People who make judgments by working with someone else are more confident in those judgments. As a result they take less input from other people”—and this myopia wipes out any advantage a pair may have over an individual, says psychologist Julia A. Minson, who conducted the study with Jennifer S. Mueller.
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Lefties vs. Righties: How we decide differently
Yahoo: We like to think that we make decisions based on our ideas of right and wrong -- and we do, to an extent. But according to recent research, our choices may also be influenced by something as simple as whether we're right or left handed. That's because right-handed people are more drawn to things on the right side of a screen or page, while left-handed people look to the left. Cognitive scientist Daniel Casasanto of The New School for Social Research says it's part of the "body-specificity hypothesis" -- the idea that our physical bodies affect the decisions we make and the way we communicate with one another. Read the whole story: Yahoo
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Thinking Outside The Box, With Our Bodies And Our Brains
NPR: Most of us have probably felt the rightness of a decision in our bodies as much as we have thought through the decision in our brains. Now, researchers report that bodily experience may create new ideas and new knowledge. Sitting inside a big box made of cardboard and plastic pipe, college students were assigned to complete a word task designed to measure creativity. Sitting outside an identical box, a second group of students completed the same task. Read the whole story: NPR
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The Rehash Hangover
Oprah.com: Symptom: You can't stop talking about what happened with your stubborn husband/boss/mother. Causes: This habit is called "co-ruminating," says Amanda Rose, an associate professor of psychological science at the University of Missouri. She has found that while we expect that getting everything off our chest will make us feel better, that often isn't true. "We've seen that there's a snowball effect where talking about your problems causes you to dwell on them, and dwelling makes you feel depressed, which makes you complain even more," she says. Read the whole story: Oprah.com
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Preschool Kids Best Prepared for Kindergarten: Study
U.S. News & World Report: All children can benefit from going to preschool, especially those who come from minority or poor families or from homes where parents don't provide much mental stimulation, a new study says. The study included 1,200 identical and fraternal twins from 600 families who were followed from age 2 until they entered kindergarten at age 5. Overall, children who went to preschool did better once they started kindergarten than those who didn't go to preschool, according to the study, which was published in the journal Psychological Science. Read the whole story: U.S. News & World Report
