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Can Mindfulness Fill Corporate America With Better, Happier Workers?
Pacific Standard: This simple breathing exercise — you’ve probably tried some version of it at the start of an exercise class or workshop — is at the core of many mindfulness programs. Looking at what various advocates mean by mindfulness, Erik Dane, a Rice University researcher who studies cognition in the workplace, writes that it boils down to a psychological state involving full attention to whatever is happening, both inside and outside a person, right now.
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Can Slowing Down Help You Be More Creative?
NPR: Despite being a self-described 'pre-crastinator, psychologist Adam Grant says those who slow down — even procrastinate — tend to be more creative, original thinkers. Read the whole story: NPR
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Backward Semantic Inhibition in Toddlers Janette Chow, Anne M. Aimola Davies, Luis J. Fuentes, and Kim Plunkett Studies in adults have suggested that backward inhibition, or inhibition of an initial stimulus, occurs when the next stimulus belongs to a different category of semantic representation (e.g., switching from the word "dog" to the word "sea"). Backward inhibition leads to inhibition not only of the previously attended item (dog) but also of new items semantically related to the previous item (e.g., cat).
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Want To Study More Effectively? Sleep Between Study Sessions
The Huffington Post: Scientists already knew that getting some decent shut-eye after studying helps to consolidate learning, but new research suggests that sleeping in between study sessions is even more effective. “Our results suggest that interleaving sleep between practice sessions leads to a twofold advantage, reducing the time spent relearning and ensuring a much better long-term retention than practice alone,” explains psychological scientist Stephanie Mazza of the University of Lyon Read the whole story: The Huffington Post
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You vs. Future You; Or Why We’re Bad At Predicting Our Own Happiness
NPR: How great would it be to win a brand new car? How horrible would it be to get laid off from your job? Research by psychologist Dan Gilbert at Harvard University suggests, not that great and not that horrible (respectively). Among the many things Gilbert studies is how people make predictions about future events—specifically, how we make predictions about how we'll feel about future events. One of the most important questions we ask when making any decision is "how will this make me feel?" But no matter how much time we spend thinking about the future, we don't get any better at predicting it.
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The Most Effective Way to Get Revenge on a Terrible Boss
New York Magazine: An employee, sick of her new boss’s verbally abusive behavior, hatches a plan to exact her revenge: She lies in wait until the next time said boss goes on one of his screaming tears, then calls a friend outside the office; that friend, in turn, calls the abusive boss’s boss, posing as building security, and says there’s an emergency that requires immediate attention. Lo and behold, the higher-ups rush on to the scene, catch the screamer mid-rant, and fire him on the spot. Read the whole story: New York Magazine
