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Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, But Science Can Help
NPR: My boyfriend and I were together for over three years, and then we weren't. The days after the breakup involved lots of crying, and an embarrassing amount of Taylor Swift. A couple of weeks later, once I was able to will myself out of sweatpants, my friend Eric — who was also coping with a breakup — came over for some IPAs and, of course, Taylor Swift singalongs. We commiserated about how much life sucked, how lonely we felt and how we were losing sleep. We discussed what was wrong in each of our relationships and what was right. "I hope talking about this so much isn't bringing you down," I told Eric. "No, this actually really helps," he said. Read the whole story: NPR
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Fitness Trackers Only Help Rich People Get Thinner
The Atlantic: Last year I bought a Lumo Lift, a device that tracks calories and buzzes whenever its wearer slouches. I wore it for about two weeks, wrote an article about it, and put it in a drawer. There it has sat, forlorn and uncharged, ever since. My experience is apparently not unusual. The authors of a new editorial in theJournal of the American Medical Association point out that fitness trackers, like the FitBit and Jawbone, only work if they're worn consistently, in the right way, and by people who actually need to become more healthy. And despite the gadgets' proliferation in recent years, each one of those factors is kind of a long shot.
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He Was a Fine Man—He Recycled
Pacific Standard: Most Americans believe that climate change is occurring. But as a recent Pew survey confirms, we don’t view it as a high-priority problem. After all, we reason, its most severe impacts won’t be felt for decades. So why change our behavior now? New research points to a simple way to shift this maddening mindset. A team led by Columbia University psychologist Lisa Zaval finds people take the issue of environmental sustainability much more seriously if they have been thinking about their legacy.
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Publication Bias May Boost Findings for Bilingual Brain Benefits
Scientific American: Of studies presented at conferences, those that found a cognitive benefit to bilingualism were almost twice as likely to get published in journals as were studies finding no benefit. Karen Hopkin reports. Over the past 10 years, many scientific papers have shown that speaking more than one language can convey some cognitive rewards. For example, bilingualism seems to boost the brain’s ability to focus, plan, and perform certain mentally taxing tasks. But a few papers show no such advantages. Now a study finds that research that challenges a bilingual benefit is less likely to be published than studies that find one.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: Tendency to Recall Remote Memories as a Mediator of Overgeneral Recall in Depression David E. Falco, Zehra F. Peynircioğlu, and Timothy J. Hohman Research has shown that people with depression sometimes show a memory deficit called overgeneral memory (OGM). OGM is the tendency to recall less specific and less detailed autobiographical memories and is thought to result in part from rumination and functional avoidance issues. Can the tendency to recall remote events also influence OGM?
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Sleep Deprivation Linked To Inappropriate, Unethical Behavior on the Job
As workers in the United States continue to work more hours every year, the National Sleep Foundation finds that Americans on average are also gradually getting fewer hours of sleep each year. For many workers
