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Happy Thoughts Can Make You Sad
Pacific Standard: The secret to success, we are sometimes told, is the power of positive thinking. In fact, there's a famous book devoted to that idea called, appropriately, The Power of Positive Thinking, and there's a similarly themed book called The Secret. But there's another secret, according to new research: Fantasizing about a wonderful, happy future may actually make depression symptoms worse in the long run. It's not that positive thinking is entirely bad for you, psychologists Gabriele Oettingen, Doris Mayer, and Sam Portnow write in Psychological Science. Indeed, in the short run, there's some evidence that daydreaming about good things can curtail symptoms of depression.
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Speed reading slows comprehension, study says
The Boston Globe: In July 2007, six-time World Speed Reading Champion Anne Jones read the final Harry Potter novel in 47 minutes flat, whizzing through 4,200 words per minute. Most people read about 200 to 400 words per minute. The idea of improving that rate is tantalizing: Imagine zipping through a novel over lunch, or clearing your inbox in minutes. ... The review, published last month in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, was led by UCSD cognitive psychologist Keith Rayner, who spent more than four decades studying the process of reading. Read the whole story: The Boston Globe
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How to Raise a Creative Child. Step One: Back Off
The New York Times: THEY learn to read at age 2, play Bach at 4, breeze through calculus at 6, and speak foreign languages fluently by 8. Their classmates shudder with envy; their parents rejoice at winning the lottery. But to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, their careers tend to end not with a bang, but with a whimper. Consider the nation’s most prestigious award for scientifically gifted high school students, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, called the Super Bowl of science by one American president. From its inception in 1942 until 1994, the search recognized more than 2000 precocious teenagers as finalists.
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Not All Psychopaths Are Criminals – Some Psychopathic Traits Are Actually Linked To Success
IFL Science: Tom Skeyhill was an acclaimed Australian war hero, known as “the blind solider-poet.” During the monumental World War I battle of Gallipoli, he was a flag signaler, among the most dangerous of all positions. After being blinded when a bomb shell detonated at his feet, he was transferred out. After the war he penned a popular book of poetry about his combat experience. He toured Australia and the United States, reciting his poetry to rapt audiences. President Theodore Roosevelt appeared on stage with him and said, “I am prouder to be on the stage with Tom Skeyhill than with any other man I know.” His blindness suddenly disappeared following a medical procedure in America.
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Speed reading claims discredited by new report
The Guardian: Despite the wishes of all those of us with a teetering to-be-read pile, companies and apps that promise to rapidly increase reading speeds are on a hiding to nothing, according to new research. A review paper, which has just been published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, analyses the latest research into the reading process, and what it means for speed-reading programmes and apps.
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What Voters Want
The New York Times: Imagine you’re discussing the presidential election with a group of friends who live in Iowa or New Hampshire. You ask them who they intend to vote for next month. “Oh, whoever’s the tallest,” one friend says. “So Jeb Bush, I guess!” “No way — I’m voting for Bernie Sanders,” another friend says. “He has a deeper voice, and my best friend growing up was named Bernie.” It sounds ridiculous — like dialogue from “The Twilight Zone” — but it’s not too far off from the sometimes superficial shortcuts our brains use to make decisions. ...
