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Worrying About the Future, Ruminating on the Past—How Thoughts Affect Mental Health
The Wall Street Journal: Patrick Molloy has a great fear of offending people. At the end of each day, he replays every one of his conversations and interactions in his head, to figure out if he needs to apologize to anyone. The 44-year-old graphic designer says it’s nearly impossible to turn these swirling thoughts off. “It feels like an unwelcome guest in my mind,” says Mr. Molloy, who lives in West Sussex in the U.K. “It’s wearying and it’s discouraging.” ... Rumination has been found to predict both the onset of depression as well as the continuation of it in a number of studies.
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Will Doctors Soon Be Prescribing Video Games For Mental Health?
NPR: Developers of a new video game for your brain say theirs is more than just another get-smarter-quick scheme. Akili, a Northern California startup, insists on taking the game through a full battery of clinical trials so it can get approval from the Food and Drug Administration — a process that will take lots of money and several years. So why would a game designer go to all that trouble when there's already a robust market of consumers ready to buy games that claim to make you smarter and improve your memory? ... "That's absurd," says psychology professor Randall Engle from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
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It Pays to Give Thanks at the Office
The Wall Street Journal: Earlier this summer, Google’s Larry Page got the highest approval ratings of any chief executive on the job review site Glassdoor.com. His likable, low-key style accounts for much of his popularity—but so does his willingness to express gratitude to the people who work for him. The company’s own “Reasons to Work at Google” reflect his way of doing things, declaring: “We love our employees and we want them to know it” and “Appreciation is the best motivation.” ... Adam Grant, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, divides people into three categories—givers, takers, and matchers.
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Read—Don’t Just Talk—to Your Kids
Pacific Standard: It's no big surprise that young children first learn language by listening to adults talk to them. Nor is it a surprise that reading aloud to kids is important to their success, both in school and work. What might be a bit more surprising: Picture books have, on average, around 70 percent more unique words than conversations directed at kids, according to a new study, suggesting that reading to kids could help improve their vocabularies.
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Researchers Find That Frequent Tests Can Boost Learning
Scientific American: In schools across the U.S., multiple-choice questions such as this one provoke anxiety, even dread. Their appearance means it is testing time, and tests are big, important, excruciatingly unpleasant events. But not at Columbia Middle School in Illinois, in the classroom of eighth grade history teacher Patrice Bain. Bain has lively blue eyes, a quick smile, and spiky platinum hair that looks punkish and pixieish at the same time. After displaying the question on a smartboard, she pauses as her students enter their responses on numbered devices known as clickers. ... Then, eight years ago, she met Mark McDaniel through a mutual acquaintance.
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What Is Happiness?
The Atlantic: At this year's Aspen Ideas Festival, we asked a group of professors, psychologists, and journalists how they would define happiness. According to Eli Finkel, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, the definition is twofold: "It seems to me that happiness is some blend of experience of pleasure and the experience of meaning and fulfillment in life," he says. "I think much more of the latter than the former." Other panelists include Tim Kasser, Susan Greenfield, Brian Grazer, Paul Bloom, Suleika Jaouad, Robert D. Putnam, and Jennifer Senior. Read the whole story: The Atlantic
