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Willpower is limited, so say yes to dessert
The Globe and Mail: If you haven’t already overdosed on shortbread cookies, eggnog and other holiday treats, the big meal on Tuesday is sure to put you over the top. Sure, advice on how to trim calories and fat abounds. Skip the appetizers (especially that triple-crème cheese or those 1,000-calorie-a-handful sugary spiced nuts). Use a smaller plate. Choose between wine and dessert. (Good luck with that.) But willpower expert Roy Baumeister, co-author of the best-seller Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, says focusing on the meal doesn’t account for all the other simultaneous draws on your willpower during the holidays. Read the whole story: The Globe and Mail
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Happy New Year: Pick Up a New Skill
The New Yorker: New Year’s Eve is a time for reflection about the year that passed and a time to set goals for the future. Should we keep doing what are we doing, or should we tackle new challenges? If you’re seven, or twelve, or twenty, it’s easy to think about new ambitions: learn Spanish, learn to paint, do a flip off your skateboard. But what if you’re older? For me, much of the past year revolved around discussions prompted by a book of mine that was published in January, called “Guitar Zero,” about the science of learning and my own adventures in learning guitar at the age of forty.
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Focus on Yourself to Alleviate Social Pain
Scientific American Mind: Many people who suffer the pain, depression and negative health effects associated with social anxiety or loneliness do not respond to common therapy tactics or drugs. Two new studies offer hope from an unlikely source: rather than focusing on your relationships with others, turn inward for relief. Mindfulness meditation—which has been around for well over 2,000 years—has many forms, but an extensive body of research supports the effectiveness of one training program in particular. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an eight-week program developed in 1979 by a U.S. physician.
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Killer’s DNA Won’t Explain His Crime
NPR: Connecticut's chief medical examiner, Wayne Carver, has raised the possibility of requesting genetic tests on Adam Lanza, the man responsible for the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Carver hasn't said precisely what he may want geneticists to look for, but scientists who study the links between genes and violence say those tests won't reveal much about why Lanza did what he did. Ellen Wright Clayton, a specialist in law and genetics at Vanderbilt University, says there aren't many possibilities. "The only thing they can be looking for here is to see whether the killer had certain genetic variants that may predispose to mental illness or to violence," she says.
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How to Make New Year’s Resolutions Stick: Q&A with an Expert on Change
TIME: It’s time to set goals for the coming year, and a psychologist has some hints for helping you to make those changes last. John Norcross, a professor of psychology at the University of Scranton, is one of the world’s leading experts on how people change addictive behaviors. Over the past 30 years, he and his colleagues have studied people who successfully quit smoking, cut back or quit heavy drinking, lost weight or started exercising regularly — including those whose lasting change began with a resolution to start on Jan. 1. He outlined some of his strategies in his new book, Changeology, and discussed how to make resolutions work. Read the whole story: TIME
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Psychology of Compromise: Why Congress Fails
LiveScience: Hyenas do it. Elephants do it. But apparently congressional representatives do not. "It" would be cooperation, which has been little-seen in Washington during the "fiscal cliff" negotiations. Despite a deadline they themselves set with consequences no one wanted, Democrats and Republicans went down to the wire before passing a bill that averts major cuts and tax increases but sets the stage for more bickering over the raising of the nation's debt limit and other budgetary issues. ... With few aisle-crossing congressional representatives around, it's no wonder the two sides rarely see eye-to-eye. But negotiation is tough even without the extra complication of politics.
