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Probing the Moist Crevices of Word Aversion
Scientific American: Warning: this article contains a word that you might find offensive. In fact, some readers might find it so deeply unsettling that they might begin to wonder about the cause of their aversion. What is it about this word that generates such a visceral experience of revulsion and discomfort? Is it something about the particular combination of sounds it forces us to utter? Maybe something about the conceptual associations that it evokes? What proportion of the population also feels this way? Is this only true of certain kinds of people and not others?
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Can Mindfulness Fill Corporate America With Better, Happier Workers?
Pacific Standard: This simple breathing exercise — you’ve probably tried some version of it at the start of an exercise class or workshop — is at the core of many mindfulness programs. Looking at what various advocates mean by mindfulness, Erik Dane, a Rice University researcher who studies cognition in the workplace, writes that it boils down to a psychological state involving full attention to whatever is happening, both inside and outside a person, right now.
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Can Slowing Down Help You Be More Creative?
NPR: Despite being a self-described 'pre-crastinator, psychologist Adam Grant says those who slow down — even procrastinate — tend to be more creative, original thinkers. Read the whole story: NPR
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Backward Semantic Inhibition in Toddlers Janette Chow, Anne M. Aimola Davies, Luis J. Fuentes, and Kim Plunkett Studies in adults have suggested that backward inhibition, or inhibition of an initial stimulus, occurs when the next stimulus belongs to a different category of semantic representation (e.g., switching from the word "dog" to the word "sea"). Backward inhibition leads to inhibition not only of the previously attended item (dog) but also of new items semantically related to the previous item (e.g., cat).
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Want To Study More Effectively? Sleep Between Study Sessions
The Huffington Post: Scientists already knew that getting some decent shut-eye after studying helps to consolidate learning, but new research suggests that sleeping in between study sessions is even more effective. “Our results suggest that interleaving sleep between practice sessions leads to a twofold advantage, reducing the time spent relearning and ensuring a much better long-term retention than practice alone,” explains psychological scientist Stephanie Mazza of the University of Lyon Read the whole story: The Huffington Post
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You vs. Future You; Or Why We’re Bad At Predicting Our Own Happiness
NPR: How great would it be to win a brand new car? How horrible would it be to get laid off from your job? Research by psychologist Dan Gilbert at Harvard University suggests, not that great and not that horrible (respectively). Among the many things Gilbert studies is how people make predictions about future events—specifically, how we make predictions about how we'll feel about future events. One of the most important questions we ask when making any decision is "how will this make me feel?" But no matter how much time we spend thinking about the future, we don't get any better at predicting it.
