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To Feel More Productive, Take a Break to Do Something Selfless
New York Magazine: The problem with time is that it typically does exactly the opposite of what you want it to do. There are a handful of exceptions — vacation days, for example, tend to pass more slowly than those spent on your normal routine — but for the most part, the clock tends to speed up precisely when you want it to slow down. It doesn’t matter how many hours are in a day if they all seem to fly by before you can get anything done.
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Feeling Less Than Grateful? Some People Are Just Wired That Way
NPR: It's a time of year when we're often urged to be grateful; for friends, for family, for presents under the tree. But not everyone experiences gratitude as a positive force in their life. People who score higher on measures of autonomy experience less overall gratitude and value it less, according to experiments conducted by Anthony Ahrens, an associate professor of psychology at American University, and his colleagues. Autonomous folks who really value independence might feel that gratitude undermines that independence, says Ahrens.
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The Argument for the Role of Psychology in Architecture
KUT: Few things affect how you feel more than your surroundings. But when people want to create spaces, they generally turn to architects, not psychologists. But some experts recently met in Austin to argue that both disciplines need a place at the table when it comes to designing the spaces we inhabit. To understand why, consider the office cubicle, says Prof. Sam Gosling from UT’s Psychology Department. Read the whole story: KUT
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When Awe-Struck, We Feel Both Smaller and Larger
The Wall Street Journal: I took my grandchildren this week to see “The Nutcracker.” At the crucial moment in the ballet, when the Christmas tree magically expands, my 3-year-old granddaughter, her head tilted up, eyes wide, let out an impressive, irrepressible “Ohhhh!” The image of that enchanted tree captures everything marvelous about the holiday, for believers and secular people alike. The emotion that it evokes makes braving the city traffic and crowds worthwhile. What the children, and their grandmother, felt was awe—that special sense of the vastness of nature, the universe, the cosmos, and our own insignificance in comparison.
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Violence spreads among teens like a contagious disease, study says
CNN: A friend sneezes, you're likely to catch a cold. Violence can be similarly contagious among middle and high school students, results of a study published Tuesday in the American Journal of Public Health suggest. Teens are 48% more likely to get involved in a serious fight and 183% more likely to hurt someone badly enough to require medical attention if a friend had done so, say researchers from Ohio State University. "Other studies have shown we are influenced by our friends, but no other study has looked at whether, or how far the behavior spreads," said co-author Brad J. Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology and researcher on aggression and violence. ...
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Review: Michael Lewis on Two Well Matched (but Finally Mismatched) Men
The New York Times: Among Daniel Kahneman’s many imaginative contributions to the field of psychology is something called the “peak-end rule,” which holds that our memories of any given experience are defined not by how we felt about it moment to moment, but how we felt as it ended and how it felt at its most intense. Say you go to Italy, and the first five days are blighted by rain, but the last two are ablaze with sunshine. You are likely to remember that trip far more fondly than had it been the other way around. Read the whole story: The New York Times
