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Stressed at Work? Blame Your Email.
The Wall Street Journal: A new lexicon is emerging to describe the unique stresses of work in the 21st century. Researchers have coined a term, “telepressure,” to describe our urge to respond immediately to emails. The definition also includes those who find themselves repeatedly thinking about how they need to return a note to their colleague or jot an email back to their boss. “You have trouble cognitively letting it go,” said Larissa K. Barber, an assistant professor of psychology at Northern Illinois University. Barber and a colleague recently authored a paper that links this preoccupation with work communication – it can also apply to texts, she said – to burnout.
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Why YouTube Videos Go Viral
New York Magazine: Half of all YouTube videos have fewer than 500 views, but a tiny fraction of the 100 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute garner millions of hits, turning amateur filmmakers into stars or launching viral marketing campaigns. Recently, a video of a New York woman getting catcalled posted by the advocacy group Hollaback! became an internet sensation. A video of men trying to lure a drunk woman home went viral last week, before it was revealed to be a hoax. A few days ago, a clip of a man singing “Blackbird” to his dying son started making the rounds. ...
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When Thankfulness Can Hurt Us
U.S. News & World Report: Todd Kashdan, a psychology professor at George Mason University, is one of those guys. The good kind. The type who, when the waiter brings the check, doesn’t miss a beat and offers his credit card before his friends do. But sometimes, one of Kashdan’s friends takes the gesture as a challenge and insists on paying the bill himself. That’s where things can go wrong. Instead of “thank you” and “you're welcome,” it’s “I got it” and “no, no, no, I got it.” Instead of warmth and appreciation, it’s discomfort and confusion.
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Complex jobs ‘may protect memory’
BBC: A study of more than 1,000 Scottish 70-year-olds found that those who had had complex jobs scored better on memory and thinking tests. One theory is a more stimulating environment helps build up a "cognitive reserve" to help buffer the brain against age-related decline, The research was reported in Neurology. The team, from Heriot-Watt University, in Edinburgh, is now planning more work to look at how lifestyle and work interact to affect memory loss. Those taking part in the study took tests designed to assess memory, processing speed and general thinking ability, as well as filling in a questionnaire about their working life.
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Debate Persists Over Diagnosing Mental Health Disorders, Long After ‘Sybil’
The New York Times: The notion that a person might embody several personalities, each of them distinct, is hardly new. The ancient Romans had a sense of this and came up with Janus, a two-faced god. In the 1880s, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” a novella that provided us with an enduring metaphor for good and evil corporeally bound. Modern comic books are awash in divided personalities like the Hulk and Two-Face in the Batman series. Even heroic Superman has his alternating personas.
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How to Defeat the Impulse Buy
The New York Times: As Thanksgiving approaches, so does the holiday shopping season. Once again, a day traditionally meant to celebrate gratitude will inaugurate a month of rampant consumerism. As a psychologist who studies decision making, I’m acutely aware that marketers know how the mind works, and they aren’t hesitant to use that knowledge to stoke consumers’ desires and lessen their self-control. Tactics emphasizing scarcity (“only 10 televisions at this price in stock”) and delayed cost (“0 percent interest until 2016”) are employed to great effect.
