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Thinking Outside The Box, With Our Bodies And Our Brains
NPR: Most of us have probably felt the rightness of a decision in our bodies as much as we have thought through the decision in our brains. Now, researchers report that bodily experience may create new ideas and new knowledge. Sitting inside a big box made of cardboard and plastic pipe, college students were assigned to complete a word task designed to measure creativity. Sitting outside an identical box, a second group of students completed the same task. Read the whole story: NPR
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The Rehash Hangover
Oprah.com: Symptom: You can't stop talking about what happened with your stubborn husband/boss/mother. Causes: This habit is called "co-ruminating," says Amanda Rose, an associate professor of psychological science at the University of Missouri. She has found that while we expect that getting everything off our chest will make us feel better, that often isn't true. "We've seen that there's a snowball effect where talking about your problems causes you to dwell on them, and dwelling makes you feel depressed, which makes you complain even more," she says. Read the whole story: Oprah.com
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Preschool Kids Best Prepared for Kindergarten: Study
U.S. News & World Report: All children can benefit from going to preschool, especially those who come from minority or poor families or from homes where parents don't provide much mental stimulation, a new study says. The study included 1,200 identical and fraternal twins from 600 families who were followed from age 2 until they entered kindergarten at age 5. Overall, children who went to preschool did better once they started kindergarten than those who didn't go to preschool, according to the study, which was published in the journal Psychological Science. Read the whole story: U.S. News & World Report
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The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever
Wired Magazine: Jeffrey Mitchell, a volunteer firefighter in the suburbs of Baltimore, came across the accident by chance: A car had smashed into a pickup truck loaded with metal pipes. Mitchell tried to help, but he saw at once that he was too late. The car had rear-ended the truck at high speed, sending a pipe through the windshield and into the chest of the passenger—a young bride returning home from her wedding. There was blood everywhere, staining her white dress crimson. Mitchell couldn’t get the dead woman out of his mind; the tableau was stuck before his eyes. He tried to tough it out, but after months of suffering, he couldn’t take it anymore.
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Getting the point across: Scientists find managers who frequently make pointing gestures tend to be obeyed
Daily Mail: The secret of management may be a lot simpler than most business science courses might have you believe - just point your fingers a lot. Film directors such as Stephen Spielberg do a lot of seemingly meaningless pointing on set - but the gesture helps stamp authority on a chaotic film set. From a very early age, humans associate pointing with teaching and authority - and tend to believe and obey people who point. Psychologists believe we link the gesture to people with knowledge and authority. Simply gesticulating like this may suggest they have greater knowledge and should be obeyed, according to a team from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
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How does stress affect your decision-making?
CBC News: New research suggests people under stress are more likely to look on the positive side of things when making choices. Researchers studying the effects of stress on decision-making found that anxiety changes the way people weigh risks and rewards. Their results, released Tuesday, seem somewhat counter-intuitive, as stress is normally associated with negative experiences and outcomes. "It's a bit surprising that stress makes people focus on the way things could go right," said Mara Mather of the University of Southern California, who co-wrote the paper with Nichole R. Lighthall for the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. Read the whole story: CBC News
