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The Trick to Keeping Friends as We Get Older
Two or three times a week, Alan J. Fink, 64, the owner and manager of a box business in Baltimore, listens as his mother wishes out loud that she had good friends to go out with. That is worrisome for his mother, who is 88—and for himself. “I don’t want to be in her position in another 20 years,” Mr. Fink says. He frets that his circle of friends should be wider, “so that, down the pike, we’ll all be available to each other—if and when we need each other.” A growing body of data confirms that friends are essential to our medical, psychological and social well-being as we age. Yet many people find it difficult to maintain their circles of friends as they grow older.
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Bad First Impressions Are Not Set in Stone
Common wisdom holds that negative first impressions are hard to shake—and some research backs this up. But such studies often unfairly compare impressions based on immoral deeds that are extreme and relatively rare (such as selling drugs to kids) with impressions based on kindnesses that are more common (such as sharing an umbrella). A new set of studies involving precisely balanced behaviors finds that people are more willing to change their mind about individuals who initially come off as selfish than about those they deem selfless.
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In the autumn, squirrels think about nuts so much that it may make their brains bigger
In the world of squirrel researchers, Stephanie Preston, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, is a bit of a legend. “She’s the one that actually discovered the head flick and it was first to document it,” says Mikel Delgado, a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California-Davis. That head flick is just one of several ways that squirrels assess nuts to either eat them or store them away for the winter. “She showed that the squirrels were actually weighing the nut as they shake their heads,” says Lucia Jacobs, professor of psychology at the University of California-Berkeley, where both Delgado and Preston did their graduate work.
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Social scientists reveal everything you need to know about holding the perfect meeting
Does your boss have an unhealthy relationship with flow charts? Do your colleagues scroll on their phones during meetings? Do you find meetings that should take 15 minutes last an hour? You’re not alone, but help is on the way thanks to a team of psychological scientists who analyzed nearly 200 scientific studies of workplace meetings. Their report — with actionable tips on how to improve meetings — is published in the latest edition of the peer-reviewed “Current Directions in Psychological Science,” a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Young people are vulnerable to loneliness too
At its most basic level, loneliness is unwanted solitude. However, it can also be a sense of isolation completely unrelated to how many people are around. It’s a feeling that has more to do with the quality of our relationships than our real or virtual friend count. One can feel cripplingly lonely in a crowd and, in many ways, this its worst manifestation − like dying of thirst on a desert island surrounded by cool, blue, undrinkable, seawater. Psychologists distinguish between social loneliness and emotional loneliness. The former is related to fitting in and feeling like we belong, while emotional loneliness is about separation from loved ones.
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Can Childhood Stress Affect the Immune System?
Whether it’s growing up in gut-wrenching poverty, dealing with dysfunctional family dynamics, or coping with persistent bullying in school, extreme adversity can shatter a child’s sense of emotional well-being. But does it also place kids at higher of developing heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic health conditions as adults? Katherine Ehrlich, a researcher at University of Georgia, Athens, wants to take a closer look at this question.
