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L’ozio rende tristi (Idleness saddened)
La Stampa: Chissà cosa direbbe Bertrand Russell, l’autore della raccolta di saggi intitolata “Elogio dell’ozio” sapendo che chi si trastulla nel dolce far nulla in realtà è più triste di chi invece s’impegna in una qualche attività, anche semplice, o un hobby. C’è da dire che in verità Russell non proponeva di starsene in panciolle tutto il giorno, ma di impegnarsi in attività lavorative per 4 ore al giorno in modo da avere il tempo di pensare, socializzare eccetera – e questa potrebbe anche essere una meta a cui molti vorrebbero poter arrivare. Ma l’uomo moderno – a parte qualche eccezione – a stare fermo proprio non ci riesce.
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Wobbly Chairs May Affect Your Values
Scientific American: A wobbly chair is more than just annoying. Believe it or not, it can influence your values, or beliefs about others. Past studies have shown a link between physical objects and our emotions. Carry a cold drink at a party and you’re likely to consider other guests cold and offputting. Hold a warm drink, and you tend to perceive those same people as warm and welcoming. In a new study, subjects sat either on wobbly chairs or stable chairs. While seated, they were asked to gauge the stability of several celebrity relationships, for example, Jay-Z and Beyonce.
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Rising field of science boosts how we grasp thought
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Say you're getting ready to take the SAT. You spend hours brushing up on vocabulary; you do hundreds of practice problems; you learn tips on test-taking from a tutor. Those are good techniques, but you might consider adding a new trick: wearing a lab coat. People who wore white lab coats made half as many mistakes on attention-related tasks as those wearing their regular clothes, according to a study published this year by Hajo Adam, a visiting assistant professor at Northwestern University, along with colleague Adam Galinsky. It is unclear whether the effects wear off over time, or if knowing the trick removes its effectiveness.
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Talk Yourself Into Top Performance
Forbes: In the privacy of our minds, we all talk to ourselves — an inner monologue that might seem rather pointless. As one scientific paper on self-talk asks: “What can we tell ourselves that we don’t already know?” But as that study and others go on to show, the act of giving ourselves mental messages can help us learn and perform at our best. Researchers have identified the most effective forms of self-talk, collected here — so that the next time you talk to yourself, you know exactly what you should say. Self-talk isn’t just motivational messages like “You can do it!” or “Almost there,” although this internal cheering section can give us confidence.
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Time Flies When You’re Having Goal-Motivated Fun
Though the seconds may tick by on the clock at a regular pace, our experience of the 'fourth dimension' is anything but uniform. When we're waiting in line or sitting in a boring meeting, time seems to slow down to a trickle. And when we get caught up in something completely engrossing - a gripping thriller, for example - we may lose sense of time altogether. But what about the idea that time flies when we're having fun? New research from psychological science suggests that the familiar adage may really be true, with a caveat: time flies when we're have goal-motivated fun.
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Why your brain sees men as people and women as body parts
Chicago Tribune: The sexual objectification of women isn’t just in your head—it’s in everyone’s. A new study finds that our brains see men as people and women as body parts. The research, published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, suggests that we process images of men and women differently in the brain. “Global” cognitive processing, which is the brain’s method of interpreting an image in its entirety, is more often employed when viewing men. However, “local” cognitive processing, or seeing the parts that make up the whole, is the brain’s apparent default method for women.