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WOOP, There It Is! 4 Steps To Achieve Your Goals
NPR: If you can dream it, you can do it, right? Right? Well ... not so fast. While fantasizing feels good and believing in yourself is surely better than not, research shows that keeping your head in the clouds can keep you, er, from reaching the stars. This week Shankar talks with psychologist Gabriele Oettingen, author of Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside The New Science Of Motivation. Read the whole story: NPR
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What Neuroscience Says about Free Will
Scientific American: It happens hundreds of times a day: We press snooze on the alarm clock, we pick a shirt out of the closet, we reach for a beer in the fridge. In each case, we conceive of ourselves as free agents, consciously guiding our bodies in purposeful ways. But what does science have to say about the true source of this experience? In a classic paper published almost 20 years ago, the psychologists Dan Wegner and Thalia Wheatley made a revolutionary proposal: The experience of intentionally willing an action, they suggested, is often nothing more than a post hoc causal inference that our thoughts caused some behavior.
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Five myths about suicide
The Washington Post: It populates our most ancient stories, spelling the ends of figures both infamous and innocent, from to Brutus to Judas to Juliet — but we still don’t fully understand suicide. Are the causes hereditary? How much does brain chemistry matter? What are the best ways to detect the impulse? Despite decades of research, scientists, clinicians and counselors are just beginning to unlock the mysteries of self-inflicted death. Sadly, the federal government currently allocates more money to problems like headaches, Lyme disease and lupus than to suicide, according to the National Institutes of Health; no other leading cause of death (in the United States, it is No.
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Raising a Child With Grit Can Mean Letting Her Quit
The New York Times: The rule at the “grit” expert Angela Duckworth’s house? You can quit. But you can’t quit on a hard day. Few parents who pick up Angela Duckworth’s book “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” will be thinking about raising a quitter. But Dr. Duckworth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has some unexpected advice. “Quitting is essential, especially when you’re young,” said Dr. Duckworth, who was named a MacArthur “genius” in 2013 for her development of the concept of “grit”— the combination of determination and direction that drives some people to constantly work, improve and achieve.
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When Daydreaming Becomes a Problem
The Wall Street Journal: Can daydreaming become extreme to the point where it impacts daily functioning? It is a controversial notion, but Eli Somer, a clinical professor of psychology at the University of Haifa in Israel, believes extreme daydreaming—when individuals immerse themselves in vivid alternative universes which they prefer to reality—should be considered a mental disorder with a clinical diagnosis and treatment options. ... Eric Klinger, a professor emeritus in the psychology discipline at the University of Minnesota, Morris, doesn’t believe there is currently enough evidence suggesting that maladaptive daydreaming should be its own separate mental condition.
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The real reason some people end up with partners who are way more attractive
The Washington Post: You’ve probably come across those couples where one partner is significantly more attractive than the other. It’s often fodder for fictional comedy – think of oafish Homer and demure Marge in "The Simpsons," Peter and Lois Griffin in "Family Guy," or this fake article in the Onion. In real life, of course, it’s also a source of pain for some couples, who may be hurt and embarrassed to hear that their partner “could do so much better than you.” While there are all kinds of variations within partners, mixed-attractiveness couples do go somewhat against the grain.
