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Uomini e donne sessualmente uguali
Vanity Fair Italia: Sfatato il mito che vuole l’uomo più incline a pensare al sesso e più voglioso di approcciare la partner: uomini e donne non sono diversi, neanche sessualmente. Almeno stando alla conclusione di una ricerca dell’Universita’ del Michigan (Stati Uniti), pubblicata da Current Directions in Psychological Science in cui Terry Conley e collaboratori hanno rielaborato i dati raccolti nel corso di diversi anni di studio sull’argomento. Secondo questa ricerca, donne e uomini la pensano allo stesso modo e ciò che comunemente si crede è soltanto frutto di pregiudizi infondati, spesso distanti dalla realtà.
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How do siblings shape your personality?
The Boston Globe: Research has long established that parents play an integral role in shaping our personalities, but scientists are now finding that our siblings may contribute just as much, or perhaps even more. In an intriguing new book called The Sibling Effect, science writer Jeffrey Kluger argues that brothers and sisters leave a firm imprint, helping to determine whether we’ll become free-spirited risk takers or careful studious types; whether we’ll be shy or the family entertainer; and whether we’ll be inclined to smoke, use alcohol, or take illegal drugs.
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Laughing may help ease blood pressure, boost mood and enrich health in other ways
The Washington Post: Whenever I took a tumble or scraped my knee as a child, my mother typically assessed the situation and then promptly tickled me, counseling, “Laughter is the best medicine.” This trick remains remarkably effective with my own boys and, to this day, YouTube videos of laughing babies or cats playing with printers still have the power to make me feel a bit better when I’m under the weather. But while giggling is certainly a great distraction when you’re hurt or feeling low, I can’t help but wonder whether the old adage is true: Can laughter really have a positive impact on health?
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How your Facebook profile picture predicts future happiness
National Post: You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but a new study suggests you can judge future happiness by a Facebook photo. Reporting in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers find that smile intensity from a single profile picture can predict how satisfied a person will be with their life nearly four years later. The insight to future well-being replicates a link revealed in earlier research with formal portraits, sparking renewed interest in the information coded in human faces.
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Want To Resist Temptation? A New Study Suggests Thinking Might Not Always Help You
Uh-oh. Here comes temptation—for a dieter, it’s a sweet treat; an alcoholic, a beer; a married man, an attractive, available woman. How to defeat the impulse to gratify desire and stick to your long-term goals of slimness, sobriety, or fidelity? Here’s some advice: Don’t stop and think. Thinking may not help. That is one surprising conclusion of a new study by Loran Nordgren and Eileen Chou at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Nordgren and Chou wanted to make sense of two contradictory bodies of literature.
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From Halloween to Horror Movies, Why We Love to Be Afraid
ABC News: On any gloomy day, Michele Sinesky asks her husband to find a good monster movie on television -- "The Thing" or "The Tingler." "You name it, I've seen it twice," said the 63-year-old grandmother of four from Charlottesville, Va. "For one thing, it's an old-time memory back to my childhood when we kids would tell each other spooky stories late at night at sleepovers -- the sense of someone saying 'boo' to you." "But I also get an adrenaline rush when the monster jumps out at me," said Sinesky.
