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Helping the lonely and elderly during the holidays
The Baltimore Sun: When 92-year-old Carolyn Bochau gets a visitor at home, she concedes that she turns into a chatterbox. Because of health problems and old age, the Baltimore resident doesn't go out for much more than doctor appointments, so she gets excited when she has company. Around the holidays she said she wants companionship even more. "I can't keep quiet when someone is here," she said. "Because I am always cooped up in here, when someone comes I say everything and anything that comes out of my mouth." ... Prolonged isolation can be as bad for health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according research published last year in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.
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Merci pour ce cadeau (Thank you for this gift)
Le Monde: Aujourd’hui, les cadeaux pour adultes les plus vendus (étude Deloitte, 2013) sont, dans l’ordre : les livres, le chocolat, les cosmétiques, les DVD, l’argent. C’est si simple finalement de ne pas se tromper. Alors, d’où viennent ces erreurs critiques qui poussent quelqu’un à offrir un CD de Mylène Farmer à un fan d’opéra ou un pull taille 12 ans à son fils de 40 piges ?
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Take the mind-bending tests that reveal how our brain ‘invents’ part of our peripheral vision
New Zealand Herald: The world around you might not be exactly as it seems. In a new study, researchers have found that some of what we see in the periphery - the areas just outside our eye's direct focus - could be a visual illusion. A series of 'uniformity illusions' reveals this phenomenon at work, as our brain 'fills in' part of the scene to make up for our less accurate peripheral vision. According to the study, published in the journal Psychological Science, peripheral vision captures far less detail than what's seen in the centre of the visual field. But, in our day-to-day lives, we often don't notice a difference.
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THE PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH THAT HELPS EXPLAIN THE ELECTION
The New Yorker: At the end of most years, I’m typically asked to write about the best psychology papers of the past twelve months. This year, though, is not your typical year. And so, instead of the usual “best of,” I’ve decided to create a list of classic psychology papers and findings that can explain not just the rise of Donald Trump in the U.S. but also the rising polarization and extremism that seem to have permeated the world. To do this, I solicited the opinion of many leading psychologists, asking them to nominate a paper or two, with a brief explanation for their choice.
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How Social Isolation Is Killing Us
The New York Times: My patient and I both knew he was dying. Not the long kind of dying that stretches on for months or years. He would die today. Maybe tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, the next day. Was there someone I should call? Someone he wanted to see? Not a one, he told me. No immediate family. No close friends. He had a niece down South, maybe, but they hadn’t spoken in years. For me, the sadness of his death was surpassed only by the sadness of his solitude. I wondered whether his isolation was a driving force of his premature death, not just an unhappy circumstance. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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The Surprising (Easy!) Thing That Can Boost Your Kid’s Creativity
Parents: My daughter is big on talking with her hands. I've always found her grand sweeping gestures to be kind of humorous—every story she tells winds up looking like a wacky game of charades. But then along comes new research in Psychological Science that reveals encouraging those crazy hand motions can actually make kids more creative. Read the whole story: Parents
