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What Your Tweets Say About You
The New Yorker: How much can your tweets reveal about you? Judging by the last nine hundred and seventy-two words that I used on Twitter, I’m about average when it comes to feeling upbeat and being personable, and I’m less likely than most people to be depressed or angry. That, at least, is the snapshot provided by AnalyzeWords, one of the latest creations from James Pennebaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas who studies how language relates to well-being and personality.
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Stop mocking Starbucks’s ‘Race Together.’ It could actually lead to useful conversations about race.
The Washington Post: Starbucks recently launched a campaign called “Race Together,” in which baristas invite customers to engage in conversations about race by writing “race together” on their coffee cups. The idea has been mockedand critiqued as naive, insensitive and perhaps even abusive to its baristas. Don’t be so quick to dismiss it. I’ve been teaching and conducting research on the complex and, often complicated, dynamics of race-related dialogues and interracial interactions for more than 20 years. Encouraging people to talk about race and racism more often can actually improve our willingness and ability to do so.
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Too much “alone time” may shorten your life
CBS News: More Americans than ever before are living alone. Some people are better at this than others; they thrive on "alone time," and seem perfectly happy flying solo at the movies, restaurants and on vacation when the rest of the world couldn't imagine doing these things without a partner, spouse or friends. But new research finds that even if you relish solitary living, too much "me time"could cut your life short. A study conducted by researchers at Brigham Young University finds both loneliness and social isolation could shorten a person's life span, comparable to the effects of obesity.
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Older Really Can Mean Wiser
The New York Times: Behind all those canned compliments for older adults — spry! wily! wise! — is an appreciation for something that scientists have had a hard time characterizing: mental faculties that improve with age. Knowledge is a large part of the equation, of course. People who are middle-aged and older tend to know more than young adults, by virtue of having been around longer, and score higher on vocabulary tests, crossword puzzles and other measures of so-called crystallized intelligence. Still, young adults who consult their elders (mostly when desperate) don’t do so just to gather facts, solve crosswords or borrow a credit card.
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How accepting your ‘bad’ moods can actually make you happier
The Washington Post: We all say we want to be happy. But that isn’t the right goal, argues Todd Kashdan, professor of psychology and a senior scientist at the at the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being at George Mason University. Kashdan is co-author with Robert Biswas-Diener of The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why being your whole self – not just your “good” self – drives success and fulfillment. He explains: Q: Just what IS the upside of our dark side? Kashdan: One of the most important things that we’ve discovered – the message that we should always feel good and try not to feel bad, ends up being a toxic message that doesn’t work well as a strategy for going through life.
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Sheryl Sandberg teams up with LeBron James to get men to #LeanIn
CNN: In the two years since "Lean In" became a best-seller and sparked countless conversations about gender equality, author Sheryl Sandberg says she has gotten one question over and over from men: What can they do? Now the Facebook chief operating officer is giving them some specific answers by aligning with one of the most popular athletes on the planet. If LeBron James is encouraging men to lean in for women, don't you think some of his 19 million Twitter followers will get the message too?
