-
Professional Help: 5 Strategies for Creative Problem Solving
The Atlantic: If you're stuck trying to solve a problem, try the obscure. "There's a classic obstacle to innovation called functional fixedness, which is the tendency to fixate on the common use of an object or its parts," says University of Massachusetts researcher Anthony McCaffrey. "It hinders people from solving problems." This week on Professional Help, McCaffrey explains the "generic parts technique" he developed to combat this common design dilemma and shares insights based on his analysis of 1,001 historically creative inventions from his recently published paper in Psychological Science. Think beyond an object's common function.
-
Are Two Heads Really Better Than One?
Forbes: Group thinking has been a popular topic in behavioral research for a long time, particularly so in the last couple of decades. The judgment of one person can be called into question for a hundred different reasons – everything from preexisting beliefs to confirmation bias and beyond. But if you add another mind to the mix, then theoretically a buffer against some of those biases has been introduced, and better judgments should result. Or so the theory goes.
-
Essere materialisti rende depressi
La Stampa: La domanda è sempre la solita: i soldi fanno la felicità? E la risposta non sempre è la solita, tanto che, alla fine, non si è mai capito per davvero. Ma se i soldi sono la felicità di qualcuno e la rovina per qualcun altro, secondo uno studio l’essere focalizzato sul materialismo è invece un fattore di depressione, asocialità ed egoismo. Avere dunque in testa i beni materiali, il possedere sempre di più, lo scalare le classi sociali ha un impatto sulla salute mentale e, secondo gli scienziati, anche sulla salute dell’ambiente.
-
The Psychological Science of Relationships – News Brief
Association for Psychological Science 202-293-9300 (April 16, 2012) -- Our relationships with others are an essential part of everyday life, but that doesn’t mean that understanding and getting along with other people is easy. Here is some of the latest research on the mechanisms that drive our social interactions from the journal Psychological Science. ********** You Give Me the Chills: Embodied Reactions to Inappropriate Amounts of Behavioral Mimicry Lead author: N. Pontus Leander - University of Groningen – [email protected] – in press There are some people who just give us ‘the chills,’ even though they seem perfectly polite and pleasant.
-
It’s Not a Tumor! The Psychology Behind Cyberchondria
Newsweek: It’s a familiar story. You feel a little under the weather, so you rush to WebMD or MedicineNet for a self-diagnosis. When you leave the sites, you’re convinced your headache and minor nausea must indicate brain cancer. This kind of Web-enabled hypochondria, dubbed “cyberchondria,” is becoming increasingly common as more people visit the Internet instead of the doctor’s office. According to a 2009 Pew poll, 61 percent of Americans use the Internet for medical information, and other recent studies have shown wide levels of increased anxiety triggered by this habit.
-
Democrats & Republicans Don’t Care Much About Each Other’s Physical Distress
Discover Magazine: As we descend into another election year, it would be nice if we could remember that people across the political divide are, er, people too. Unfortunately, that’s harder than it sounds, according to a new study in Psychological Science. Democrats and Republicans both are less likely to empathize with people from the opposite end of the political spectrum. Psychologists know that empathy is often dependent on similarity. It’s easier, for example, to empathize with Jack London’s characters when you’re reading about Yukon explorers at a snowy bus stop than on the beach in Cancun.
