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Greenery (or Even Photos of Trees) Can Make Us Happier
The New York Times: A growing body of research shows that people who spend time outside in sunny, green and natural spaces tend to be happier and healthier than those who don’t. A study from Stanford last year, for example, found that young adults who walked for an hour through campus parkland were less anxious afterward and performed better on a test of working memory than if they had strolled along a busy street. Precisely what is going on inside our bodies as we move through the greenery is largely unknown, however.
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Safety in numbers. . . of conservatives
The Boston Globe: REMEMBER THE EBOLA scare back in 2014? Remember the shellacking that Democrats received in the 2014 election? Coincidence? A new study thinks not. Polls indicated increasing support for Republican candidates — particularly in Republican-leaning states — after the outbreak reached the United States and as Google search activity for “Ebola” increased, even though there had been a trend towards Democrats before then and even controlling for the stock market and search activity for “ISIS.” Read the whole story: The Boston Globe
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Liberals and Conservatives Solve Problems Differently
Pacific Standard: The first recorded "Eureka!" moment is widely attributed to the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, who supposedly solved a perplexing problem while relaxing in the bath. If the possibly apocryphal story accurately reflects his problem-solving methodology, it gives us a good clue regarding his political beliefs. ... Research teams led by Carola Salvi of Northwestern University have recently published two papers on the topic of how humans faced with problems arrive at solutions.
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Parrots Are a Lot More Than ‘Pretty Bird’
The New York Times: Juan F. Masello never intended to study wild parrots. Twenty years ago, as a graduate student visiting the northernmost province of Patagonia in Argentina, he planned to write his dissertation on colony formation among seabirds. But when he asked around for flocks of, say, cormorants or storm petrels, a park warden told him he was out of luck. “He said, ‘This is the only part of Patagonia with no seabird colonies,’” recalled Dr. Masello, a principal investigator in animal ecology and systematics at Justus Liebig University in Germany. Might the young scientist be interested in seeing a large colony of parrots instead? The sight that greeted Dr.
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Researchers have a new theory about how tragedies affect us
The Washington Post: After losing a spouse or a job, the conventional wisdom is that most people will find a way to cope. And for the last 15 to 20 years, research has echoed this idea. Psychologists have looked at events as diverse as heart attacks,cancer diagnoses, terrorist attacks, the death of a spouse, military deployment and mass shootings, and concluded that most people remain psychologically stable and high-functioning through such traumatic events. ... Now, a study published in Perspectives on Psychological Science is offering new findings to challenge the idea that people are generally resilient following traumatic events.
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The psychology and neuroscience of terrorism
CNN: Your brain on constant fear is not a pretty sight. What is supposed to be a lifesaving instinct becomes anchored in your body, flooding your system with corrosive hormones that can damage your health, affect the way you think and change the decisions you make. ... "Fear is the primary psychological weapon underlying acts of terrorism," said Daniel Antonius, director of forensic psychiatry at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Buffalo, New York. "It is this fear, or the anticipation of future acts of terror, that can have serious effects on our behavior and minds." Read the whole story: CNN
