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How to Tune Out Office Distractions
Multiple mechanisms contribute to our ability to tune out distractions in the workplace.
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The Contagion of Corruption
Imagine that you go to City Hall for a construction permit to renovate your house. The employee who receives your form says that, because of the great number of applications the office has received, the staff will take up to nine months to issue the permit. But if you give her $100, your form will make it to the top of the pile. You realize she has just asked for a bribe: an illicit payment to obtain preferential treatment. A number of questions are likely to go through your head. Will I pay to speed things up? Would any of my friends or relatives do the same?
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Are We Living in a Post-Happiness World?
Joy, it seems, is everywhere these days. It is used to sell boxes at Ikea. It is included in ads for drinks at McDonald’s and as a prescriptive for female hygiene. There are T-shirts that tout joy as “an act of resistance.” There is the “Chasing Joy” podcast. And a number of books are being published this year devoted to joyful living, including marriage, productivity, even how to live more like Hugh Jackman. But if joy is everywhere, why does happiness feel so elusive? Haven’t we learned anything since 2014 when Marie Kondo taught us that cleaning our closets was a path to bliss? Well, so much has changed since then.
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Students in high-achieving schools are now named an ‘at-risk’ group, study says
Communities touting the best-ranked schools are often the most in-demand among families. But this competitive environment can come at a psychological cost to those attending them. Emerging research is finding that students in “high-achieving schools” — public and private schools with high standardized test scores, varied extracurricular and academic offerings, and graduates who head off to top colleges — are experiencing higher rates of behavioral and mental health problems compared with national norms. ...
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How to write the perfect professional thank-you note
“Researchers have been making the case for 15 years that expressing gratitude can improve well-being, but we have yet to understand why in practice people don’t walk around in everyday life expressing thanks,” says Amit Kumar, a professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who has studied everything from consumer behavior to judgment and decision-making. These days, he is primarily focused on how people find joy in their daily lives.
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Help funders help you: Five tips for writing effective funding applications
In previous letters, we have given advice about launching research labs, giving talks about the research done in those labs, and writing about that research for peers and the broader world. An assumption lurking behind those pieces of advice is that you have the resources to do all that great work. In this letter, we’re addressing that elephant in the room head on: getting funding for your research. Regardless of your funding history, you probably already have some experience with the basic relevant skills. As a prospective student, you had to persuade a committee that you belonged in a certain training program.
