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Can an app change human behavior? This behavioral economics professor is banking on it
Mashable: Whether personal or professional, change is hard. And the cumulative data is not on our side. Take something obviously detrimental, like smoking. A mere 4% to 7% of people successfully quit without the aid of medication or outside help. Even experiencing a traumatic event — like the death of a loved one or being diagnosed with cancer — only leads to a 20% success rate. Not to be a killjoy, but as the Washington Post found, roughly 25% of New Year resolutions fall apart within the first two weeks. And even when it comes to our work — where money’s on the line — “70% of [management-led] transformation efforts fail.” So why is change such a struggle?
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To Feel More Productive, Take a Break to Do Something Selfless
New York Magazine: The problem with time is that it typically does exactly the opposite of what you want it to do. There are a handful of exceptions — vacation days, for example, tend to pass more slowly than those spent on your normal routine — but for the most part, the clock tends to speed up precisely when you want it to slow down. It doesn’t matter how many hours are in a day if they all seem to fly by before you can get anything done.
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Feeling Less Than Grateful? Some People Are Just Wired That Way
NPR: It's a time of year when we're often urged to be grateful; for friends, for family, for presents under the tree. But not everyone experiences gratitude as a positive force in their life. People who score higher on measures of autonomy experience less overall gratitude and value it less, according to experiments conducted by Anthony Ahrens, an associate professor of psychology at American University, and his colleagues. Autonomous folks who really value independence might feel that gratitude undermines that independence, says Ahrens.
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The Argument for the Role of Psychology in Architecture
KUT: Few things affect how you feel more than your surroundings. But when people want to create spaces, they generally turn to architects, not psychologists. But some experts recently met in Austin to argue that both disciplines need a place at the table when it comes to designing the spaces we inhabit. To understand why, consider the office cubicle, says Prof. Sam Gosling from UT’s Psychology Department. Read the whole story: KUT
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When Awe-Struck, We Feel Both Smaller and Larger
The Wall Street Journal: I took my grandchildren this week to see “The Nutcracker.” At the crucial moment in the ballet, when the Christmas tree magically expands, my 3-year-old granddaughter, her head tilted up, eyes wide, let out an impressive, irrepressible “Ohhhh!” The image of that enchanted tree captures everything marvelous about the holiday, for believers and secular people alike. The emotion that it evokes makes braving the city traffic and crowds worthwhile. What the children, and their grandmother, felt was awe—that special sense of the vastness of nature, the universe, the cosmos, and our own insignificance in comparison.
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Violence spreads among teens like a contagious disease, study says
CNN: A friend sneezes, you're likely to catch a cold. Violence can be similarly contagious among middle and high school students, results of a study published Tuesday in the American Journal of Public Health suggest. Teens are 48% more likely to get involved in a serious fight and 183% more likely to hurt someone badly enough to require medical attention if a friend had done so, say researchers from Ohio State University. "Other studies have shown we are influenced by our friends, but no other study has looked at whether, or how far the behavior spreads," said co-author Brad J. Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology and researcher on aggression and violence. ...
