-
Financial Stress Hurts, Literally
Scientific American Mind: Few things feel worse than not knowing when your next paycheck is coming. Economic insecurity has been shown to have a whole host of negative effects, including low self-esteem and impaired cognitive functioning. It turns out financial stress can also physically hurt, according to a paper published in February in Psychological Science. Read the whole story: Scientific American Mind
-
Unless You’re Oprah, ‘Be Yourself’ Is Terrible Advice.
The New York Times: IT was going to be the biggest presentation of my life — my first appearance on the TED Conference main stage — and I had already thrown out seven drafts. Searching for a new direction, I asked colleagues and friends for suggestions. “The most important thing,” the first one said, “is to be yourself.” The next six people I asked gave me the same tip. We are in the Age of Authenticity, where “be yourself” is the defining advice in life, love and career. Authenticity means erasing the gap between what you firmly believe inside and what you reveal to the outside world.
-
Psychologists grow increasingly dependent on online research subjects
Science: In May, 23,000 people voluntarily took part in thousands of social science experiments without ever visiting a lab. All they did was log on to Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online crowdsourcing service run by the Seattle, Washington–based company better known for its massive internet-based retail business. Those research subjects completed 230,000 tasks on their computers in 3.3 million minutes—more than 6 years of effort in total. The prodigious output demonstrates the popularity of an online platform that scientists had only begun to exploit 5 years ago. In 2011, according to Google Scholar, just 61 studies using MTurk were published; last year the number topped 1200.
-
The Surprising Link Between the Economy and Narcissism
The Wall Street Journal: Is there a link between narcissism and recessions? That’s the question raised by a recent paper published in the journal Psychological Science, which suggested that coming of age in a recession may lessen the chance of someone becoming a narcissist—that is, having a grandiose sense of self-worth, entitlement and superiority. The Wall Street Journal spoke to the paper’s author, Emily C. Bianchi, an assistant professor at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, about her work and its implications for millennials, CEO pay and people’s satisfaction with their work. Following are edited excerpts from the conversation. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
-
The big problem with one of the most popular assumptions about the poor
The Washington Post: In the late 1960s, Walter Mischel, a researcher at Stanford University, invited several hundred children to participate in a game in which they were given a choice: They could eat one sweet right away, or wait and have two a little later. Initially, the goal was simple: to see how and why people (kids in this case) delayed gratification. But after the end of the experiment, Mischel began to check in with as many of the participants' families as he could, and over the following decade he learned that his little experiment probably had much larger implications than he had anticipated. ...
-
Graduating and Looking for Your Passion? Just Be Patient
The New York Times: For all their grandeur and euphoria, graduation ceremonies can be harrowing. Until that momentous day, you’re a student whose job is to do what your teacher asks. Now you have to ask things of yourself — but what? If you’re relying on a commencement speaker to set your compass, you may still be confused at day’s end. In my experience, it’s common to hear “Follow your passion” from the podium. This is great counsel if, in fact, you know what that passion is. But what if you don’t? Young graduates might imagine that discovering your passion happens the way it does in a movie: with a flash of insight and a trumpet blast.
