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Different cognitive skills peak at different times over our lifespans, research finds
MinnPost: Here’s some promising news for anybody who’s aging (and that, of course, is all of us): A recent series of crowd-sourced experiments suggest that different aspects of fluid intelligence — our ability to think abstractly, reason quickly and solve problems — peak at different periods during adulthood. In other words, our brains do not, as previously believed, reach a so-called cognitive peak when were in our 20s and then start an inevitable descent. Some kinds of fluid intelligence actually improve with age. Read the whole story: MinnPost
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Everyday Routines Make Life Feel More Meaningful
Scientific American: Think about the most meaningful experiences in your life. You will probably recall your wedding, or a trip across Europe, or your first skydive. You won't name brushing your teeth. Yet recent research suggests that the mundane regularities of life can very much contribute to your overall sense of meaning. As squishy as the concept sounds, meaning in life is an integral part of our well-being. Research has associated it with good mental health, success at work and longevity. Psychologists have proposed three aspects: significance, purpose and coherence. In other words, life is meaningful when it feels important, when it seems to have a point and when it makes sense.
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How to Make Online Dating Work
The New York Times: WE turn to screens for nearly every decision. Where to eat. Where to vacation. Where to eat on vacation. Where to get treatment for the food poisoning you got at that restaurant where you ate on vacation. Where to write a negative review calling out the restaurant that gave you food poisoning and ruined your vacation. So it’s no surprise our screens are becoming the first place we turn to when looking for romance — because you need someone to take care of you when you get food poisoning on your vacation, right? One of the most amazing social changes is the rise of online dating and the decline of other ways of meeting a romantic partner.
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On the Horizon: Virtual Reality Therapy that Treats Chronic Pain
Scientific American: Strap on a headset, immerse yourself in an alternate reality and cure your pain—that's the idea of a recent study in Psychological Science. Most people think of pain as something that happens in the body—I twist my head too far, and my neck sends a “pain signal” to the brain to indicate that the twisting hurts. In reality, pain is simply the brain telling us we are in danger. Although certain nerve endings throughout the body can indeed detect bodily harm, their signals are only one factor that the brain uses to determine if we should experience pain. Many cases of chronic pain are thought to be the result of obsolete brain associations between movement and pain. ...
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Why Superstitions Help Athletes Perform Better
New York Magazine: In his acclaimed book The Game, Hall of Fame NHL goaltender Ken Dryden described some of the various superstitions he picked up over the years, from nodding at a particular Montreal Forum usherette before home games to shooting a puck off a certain part of the boards at the start of pregame warm-ups. “I don’t tell anyone about them, I’m not proud I have them, I know I should be strong enough to decide one morning, any morning, no longer to be a prisoner to them," he wrote. "Yet I seem helpless to do anything about it.” ... Dr.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Competence Judgments Based on Facial Appearance Are Better Predictors of American Elections Than of Korean Elections Jinkyung Na, Seunghee Kim, Hyewon Oh, Incheol Choi, and Alice O'Toole To examine cultural differences in the importance of face-trait judgments, the researchers showed American and Korean participants pairs of images consisting of both the winner and the runner-up of an American or a Korean election. For each image pair, participants indicated which person they thought was the most competent and which person they would be most likely to vote for.
