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Chasing the ‘Holy Grail’ of Baseball Performance
In the final regular-season game for the 1977 Los Angeles Dodgers, Dusty Baker hit a home run, giving him 30 for the season and making him the fourth Dodger to reach that milestone that year, a Major League Baseball record. As Baker rounded third, a rookie who had recently entered the game, Glenn Burke, approached the plate from the on-deck circle and, seized by joy, raised his hand high above his head. Baker was taken aback by the gesture and, in a mix of celebration and confusion, decided to smack Burke’s hand. Their high five was clumsy, but then again it had every right to be: Reportedly, it was the first one ever. Baseball has always been a strange mix of social and solo.
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Graphic Warning Labels Linked to Reduced Sugary Drink Purchases
Warning labels that include photos linking sugary drink consumption with obesity, type 2 diabetes, and tooth decay may reduce purchases of the drinks, a field study shows.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes Tyler W. Watts, Greg J. Duncan, and Haonan Quan In 1990, Shoda, Mischel, and Peake showed that preschoolers’ ability to wait to eat a marshmallow or other treat (i.e., to delay gratification) was related to their later cognitive and social achievements and development.
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Why You Should Stop Being So Hard on Yourself
“We’re all our own worst critics.” Ever heard that one before? Yes, it’s an obnoxious cliché, but it’s not just self-help fluff. Evolutionary psychologists have studied our natural “negativity bias,” which is that instinct in us all that makes negative experiences seem more significant than they really are. In other words: We’ve evolved to give more weight to our flaws, mistakes and shortcomings than our successes. “Self-criticism can take a toll on our minds and bodies,” said Dr. Richard Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also teaches psychology and psychiatry.
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The case against prolific Instagram use is all about protecting your memories
Here’s a hot tip for this summer vacation season: Stop. Put the camera down. Don’t take that photo. A study published recently in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition details two experiments, each producing evidence that in situations where people snap photos, their memories of those situations will fade more than in those in which they did not reach for their cameras. These findings, by two University of California-Santa Cruz researchers, ostensibly discredit the idea that by taking photos, we can offload our own organic memories and store them in pictures.
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Buckle Your Truck Up: Factors That May Slacken Seat Belt Use
As a possible explanation, the authors write that males “generally tend to make riskier decisions in order to show how self-confident they are in being the ‘stronger’ sex.”
