-
Materialism makes people depressed
Times of India: People who place a high value on wealth, status, and stuff are more depressed and anxious and less sociable than those who do not, say researchers. They also indicated that materialism is not just a personal problem. It's also environmental. Read the whole story: Times of India
-
Benefits of Bickering: Disunity and Ethics
I love reading accounts of the West Wing’s inner workings, because they are studies in the quirkiness of human psychology. Presidents and their trusted staffs always arrive in the White House with a unified message and team spirit, and they inevitably disintegrate into factions—ideological purists and pragmatists, seasoned vets and young Turks. It’s just as true of Obama’s West Wing today as it was of Nixon’s and FDR’s, and probably every presidency back to the founding. The common wisdom is that such factions are a bad thing, not just for the White House but for any complex organization. Internal bickering takes key leaders off message and saps energy and hurts job performance.
-
Being in Power Does Not Always Magnify Personality
“If you want to test a man’s character, give him power,” said Abraham Lincoln. It’s a truism that power magnifies personality—but is it true? A new study says no. “Before, people thought that disposition is linked to will; it’s mainly internally driven,” says University College London psychologist Ana Guinote, who conducted the study with Mario Weick of the University of Kent and London doctoral student Alice Cai. “Our findings show that the environment crucially triggers dispositional or counter-dispositional behavior in powerful people.” The findings appear in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
-
Think Big To Get Golf Hole in One
Express UK: Amateur players could improve their putting by simply visualising the hole as bigger, claims a new study. Researchers used an optical illusion, placing different sized circles around each hole to change participants’ perception. Read the whole story: Express UK
-
La depresión de las mujeres hace que los miembros de la pareja se aíslen
NeoMundo: La tristeza no es buena compañera para el éxito de una relación amorosa. La depresión de las mujeres hace que los miembros de una pareja se aíslen uno del otro, concluyó una nueva investigación. Los autores de la Universidad Hebrea de Jerusalem y la Universidad Bar-Ilan (Israel) explicaron que una persona deprimida se vuelca hacia adentro o se torna hostil, y tiende a dar poco a su pareja. Reuma Gadassi, uno de los investigadores, subrayó que la depresión también impide que un hombre o mujer detecte los pensamientos o sentimientos del otro, una situación que empeora el aislamiento. Read the whole story: NeoMundo
-
Is Student Cheating Driven by Big Income Gaps?
The Chronicle of Higher Education: There’s a whole lot of cheating going on. More than 60 percent of college undergraduates, and more than 40 percent of graduate students, admit to cheating in some way on their written work, according to a national survey by Clemson University’s International Center for Academic Integrity. Now one graduate student has come up with a reason for all this: income inequality. Lukas Neville, a doctoral student at Queen’s University in Ontario, reports in the latest issue of Psychological Science that there’s more evidence of academic dishonesty in U.S. states with bigger gaps between the rich and the poor.
