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She’s a Happiness Professor. Her Lessons Are Helping Her Beat Burnout
A dental emergency was Laurie Santos’ wake-up call. It wasn’t even her own: One of Santos’ students at Yale University needed her sign-off before getting some work done. Instead of feeling sympathy for her student, Santos mostly felt annoyed about the extra paperwork she’d need to complete. That reaction was unusual and concerning for Santos, a psychologist who teaches Yale’s single most popular course, on the science of happiness. She knew that cynicism, irritability, and exhaustion—all of which had been gnawing at her recently—were telltale signs of burnout, a condition that almost 30% of U.S.
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A Fast-Growing Segment of Psychology Is Landing Grads Jobs in Corporate America
For decades, researchers have extolled the benefits of investing in workers and employees—something that an increasing number of employers have started taking more seriously. The pandemic accelerated the trend, as millions of employees struggled with remote work, family obligations, health concerns, and more. People were and remain stressed and anxious—and that’s something that can affect their job performance and, ultimately, the bottom line for their employers.
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Time Is Fleeting. Here’s How to Stay on Track With New Year’s Goals
Time is a thief, as my Uncle Dan loves to say, and if you want to achieve your most cherished life goals, you have to learn to manage it. As we all dive into the new year with fresh resolutions, psychologists say managing our time is the place to start. "Time management is essential to the smart goal approach," says Keisha Moore-Medina, a therapist at the Menninger Clinic in Houston, who helps clients navigate goal-setting, using a well-known strategy that was developed in the 1980s known by the acronym SMART. It's a formula that helps you organize your time around your goals. And this may require you to say 'no' to activities that don't align.
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New Content From Current Directions in Psychological Science
A sample of articles on racism and historical context, prosocial behavior in the face of a disaster, studying mental health as systems, exceptional abilities in autism, LGBTQ+ parents, and much more.
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The Best New Year’s Resolution Might Be to Just Let Go of an Unfulfilled Life Goal
Since the 19th century, when motivational science had its start, scientists have focused on what makes us persist through difficulties and achieve what we want. Only recently have they zeroed in on how we can relinquish our cherished aspirations—and why we should. They term this process “goal disengagement,” and New York University research psychologist Gabriele Oettingen says it has been treated as the “black sheep” of the field. Why is that so? Western cultural bias celebrates persistence and achievement, so abandoning goals is seen as “failure,” says psychologist Cathleen Kappes of the University of Hildesheim in Germany.
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What’s That Smell? It Might Just Be the Next Big Thing in Travel.
A dozen travelers gather around Martin Schaffner’s 16th-century painting “Christ in Limbo,” and take a deep breath. Thanks to hand-held scent diffusers these tourists are getting a whiff of smoke and sulfur to evoke the fiery gates of hell depicted in the Renaissance artwork. It’s all part of a “Follow Your Nose” tour at Museum Ulm, in Germany. By pairing artworks depicting odorous things—flower gardens, a perfume ball, or a table full of food—with reconstructed scents, the cultural center hopes to further immerse patrons in its collection.
