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Savor Extraordinary Experiences, Feel Worse Afterward
Pacific Standard: Feeling out of sorts this morning? Maybe it was that recent trip you took to Machu Picchu. Sure, it was fun at the time—amazing, really. But it’s not like you could truly share the experience of high-altitude awe with your friends and colleagues. As they compared amusing stories about bad camping trips, you began feeling not so much special and privileged as … left out. If that story describes you, congratulations: You’ve just discovered the surprising downside of engaging in a rare and wonderful adventure.
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Your choice of mate can make or break your career
Fortune: The most successful people in one study all went home at night to partners who exhibit a particular personality type: conscientiousness. “Your husband, wife, or sweetheart probably doesn’t come to work with you every day,” says Brittany Solomon. “But his or her influence clearly does.” Solomon, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, recently led a study analyzing the careers and personalities of about 5,000 married people, aged 19 to 89, over a five-year period. About 75% were in two-career couples. Read the whole story: Fortune
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In Defense of Spoilers
The Atlantic: Last October, one week after the Breaking Bad series finale, I was having breakfast with a friend in Chicago. "Do not tell me the end of the Breaking Bad," he said. "I just started Season 2 and I have been off the Internet for the last few days. Total blackout. I've stopped following the news just to stay away from spoilers. Do not say a word." "It was a great episode," I said. "No, not another word," he responded. "Seriously." Forty-five minutes later, after coffee and pancakes, I glanced at my phone and starting giggling at the table. "What is it," he said. Read the whole story: The Atlantic
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Eating Comfort Foods May Not Be So Comforting After All
NPR: For many of us, chicken soup can soothe the soul and mac and cheese can erase a bad day. We eat chocolate when we feel gloomy, or when we've been in the presence of a Dementor. And we eat chocolate ice cream to help us get over a bad breakup. These comfort foods usually aren't so good for our arteries, but we tend to think they have healing properties — that they're the antidote for all our emotional afflictions. But maybe they're not, says Traci Mann, a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota. In a recent study, Mann and some colleagues induced a bad mood in 100 college students by making them watch clips from sad movies.
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Positive Implicit Messages May Improve Older Adults’ Physical Functioning
Older adults who were exposed to positive stereotypes about aging without being aware of it showed improved physical functioning that lasted up to several weeks, according to research forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. A team of researchers led by psychological scientist Becca Levy of the Yale School of Public Health used a novel intervention method to examine whether exposure to positive age stereotypes could weaken negative age stereotypes and their effects over time, and lead to healthier outcomes.
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WHAT WE LEARNED FROM SENDING 1,000 COLD EMAILS
Fast Company: Cold emails can be awful. And yet--we’ve formed valuable mentor relationships via cold email. As journalists, cold emails are often our only avenue for reaching important sources; in our businesses, cold emails are frequently how we make sales and drive growth. The point of cold email is typically to get something out of someone else. And yet, as Adam Grant finds in his 2013 book, Give and Take, “Givers” tend to be far more successful salespeople and engineers and entrepreneurs and humans than “Takers” who are out for themselves. So how does one reconcile the inherent “Taker” nature of cold email with the desire to be more successful (and make the world less crappy)?
