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Lessons From the Dress
Slate: The brain lives in a bony shell. The completely light-tight nature of the skull renders this home a place of complete darkness. So the brain relies on the eyes to supply an image of the outside world, but there are many processing steps between the translation of light energy into electrical impulses that happens in the eye and the neural activity that corresponds to a conscious perception of the outside world. In other words, the brain is playing a game of telephone and—contrary to popular belief—our perception corresponds to the brain’s best guess of what is going on in the outside world, not necessarily to the way things actually are.
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Researchers Study Awe and Find It Is Good for Relationships
The Wall Street Journal: Polett Villalta says her first deep scuba dive was one of the best experiences of her life. As she descended to 110 feet, a sunken ship slowly became visible in the green-grey water. A turtle swam by. She and her dive buddies entered the darkness of the ship with a flashlight, and the wreck “came alive,” she says. Colorful coral grew over the submerged steel; parrotfish and angelfish darted in and out of shadows. She dropped to the sand and touched the bottom of the ocean. ... People report having three awe experiences a week on average, says Dacher Keltner, director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr.
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People Who Volunteer Are Happier With Their Work-Life Balance
New York Magazine: If you feel that your job is eating up your life, then you probably also feel like you can't take on any additional commitments — even though you know you probably should be volunteering at your kid's school or a soup kitchen or something. Who has the time? Actually, you do, or you'll feel like you do once you start volunteering, suggests a new study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Its authors found that people who volunteer are happier with their work-life balance than those who don't volunteer, even when total actual free time is controlled for. ...
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PSYCHOLOGY ON ORDER: HOW RESTAURANTS GET YOU TO SPEND MORE
Associated Press: You may think you're immune to transparent sales pitches like "Do you want fries with that?" But the tactics restaurants use to nudge you into spending a little extra may be subtler than you realize. Here's a look at a few ways companies get you to spend (and eat) more than you intended. ...
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Too Much Workplace Positivity Might Dampen Employee Motivation
Workers in Google’s offices enjoy an impressive array of perks: subsidized massages, scooters, putting greens, and office video game consoles. In an interview with The New York Times, a Google spokesman explained that the company provides these unusual perks as a way "to create the happiest, most productive workplace in the world." But new research suggests that when it climbs too high, a positive mood in the office can actually hurt employee motivation. Happy employees are more likely to engage in the kind of proactive above-and-beyond behaviors that organizations need to succeed.
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What Your Online Comments Say About You
The New York Times: When we comment on news stories, most of us hope to say something about the topic at hand — even (or maybe especially) if it’s that the author got it all wrong. But what do the comments we leave say about us — about our beliefs, our biases and how we act when the ordinary rules don’t apply? And how do our comments affect the beliefs of others? Some researchers are taking up these questions. One is Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, a psychology professor at Skidmore College. In a recent study, she and her co-authors Aneta K. Molenda and Charlotte R.
