-
The Wisdom of the Aging Brain
Nautilus: At the 2010 Cannes Film Festival premiere of You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, director Woody Allen was asked about aging. He replied with his characteristic, straight-faced pessimism. “I find it a lousy deal. There is no advantage in getting older. I’m 74 now. You don’t get smarter, you don’t get wiser ... Your back hurts more, you get more indigestion ... It’s a bad business, getting old. I’d advise you not to do it if you can avoid it.” Creaking bones and bad digestion notwithstanding, is that really the only face of aging? Turns out, it’s not. At least for the fortunate few, old age may not be Woody Allenesque; instead old age is when they become compassionate and wise.
-
The social lives of rich people, explained
The Washington Post: Way back in 1983, Cyndi Lauper knew that "money changes everything." Social science is finally starting to catch up. The latest findings, from Emily Bianchi of Emory University and Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota, illustrate how having more (or less) money can radically alter the fabric of our relationships with other people, changing how often we socialize — and with whom. In examining several decades of household survey data, Bianchi and Vohs find that as people make more money, they spend less time socializing with others; they spend more time alone. And when they socialize, they spend more time with friends than with family members or neighbors.
-
WOOP, There It Is! 4 Steps To Achieve Your Goals
NPR: If you can dream it, you can do it, right? Right? Well ... not so fast. While fantasizing feels good and believing in yourself is surely better than not, research shows that keeping your head in the clouds can keep you, er, from reaching the stars. This week Shankar talks with psychologist Gabriele Oettingen, author of Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside The New Science Of Motivation. Read the whole story: NPR
-
What Neuroscience Says about Free Will
Scientific American: It happens hundreds of times a day: We press snooze on the alarm clock, we pick a shirt out of the closet, we reach for a beer in the fridge. In each case, we conceive of ourselves as free agents, consciously guiding our bodies in purposeful ways. But what does science have to say about the true source of this experience? In a classic paper published almost 20 years ago, the psychologists Dan Wegner and Thalia Wheatley made a revolutionary proposal: The experience of intentionally willing an action, they suggested, is often nothing more than a post hoc causal inference that our thoughts caused some behavior.
-
New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: A Unified Model of Depression: Integrating Clinical, Cognitive, Biological, and Evolutionary Perspectives Aaron T. Beck and Keith Bredemeier Over the last several decades, research in many domains has advanced the scientific understanding of different aspects of depression. The authors of this article aim to integrate these findings into a comprehensive theoretical account of the disorder. In this unified model, depression is conceptualized as an adaptation to the perceived loss of a vital resource.
-
Five myths about suicide
The Washington Post: It populates our most ancient stories, spelling the ends of figures both infamous and innocent, from to Brutus to Judas to Juliet — but we still don’t fully understand suicide. Are the causes hereditary? How much does brain chemistry matter? What are the best ways to detect the impulse? Despite decades of research, scientists, clinicians and counselors are just beginning to unlock the mysteries of self-inflicted death. Sadly, the federal government currently allocates more money to problems like headaches, Lyme disease and lupus than to suicide, according to the National Institutes of Health; no other leading cause of death (in the United States, it is No.
