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Are You a “Pre-crastinator”?
Scientific American: Each of us, at times, can be a procrastinator, putting off something that is hard to do or that we don’t want to do. But three researchers at Pennsylvania State University think we humans may also be precrastinators—hurrying to get something done so we can cross it off our mental to-do list, even if the rush ends up being wasteful. The researchers also claim to have coined the term “precrastination.” Psychology professor David Rosenbaum and his two collaborators reached their conclusion after asking 257 students to complete a bucket challenge. Not the one in which you dump ice water on your head. Instead, they brought each student to a narrow alley in town.
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A School Lunch Tray Redesign to Trick Kids Into Making Healthy Choices
Slate: In his new book Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life, director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab Brian Wansink argues that 25 years of research have convinced him that “becoming slim by design works better than trying to become slim by willpower.” In the book, published this week, he outlines concrete strategies for designing homes, restaurants, grocery stores, workplaces, and schools in ways that surreptitiously encourage healthy eating habits.
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The Colbert Report: Walter Mischel
The Colbert Report: Psychological scientist Walter Mischel of Columbia University discusses his new book, "The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control" with Stephen Colbert. Watch here: The Colbert Report
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Uncanny Valley Not So Uncanny for Lonely People
Live Science: Loneliness breeds wishful thinking, according to a new study that finds that eerily unrealistic faces seem more realistic to people when they feel isolated and alone. People who are lonely see the"uncanny valley effect" — when a face looks almost, but not quite, lifelike — as more appealing than social butterflies do, according to the new research, detailed Sept. 5 in the journal Psychological Science. Read the whole story: Live Science
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Bad Times Bond Us Together
New York Magazine: Harry Potter nerds, remember the scene in the first book when the kids defeat the troll? There’s a great line at the end of the chapter that goes, “There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.” Now some new research delves into that notion, further solidifying the idea that sharing a stressful or painful experience with other people helps bond us together.
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Do We Have an Internal Calorie Counter?
The Huffington Post: Many explanations have been offered for the country's obesity epidemic, and one is nutritional ignorance. People simply don't know what a calorie is, so how can they be expected to know a calorie-rich food when they see one? Most of us don't even know what a gram of apple or an ounce of milk looks like, so how can we possibly calculate a sensible portion? Well, perhaps arithmetic is not required, and it may even be misleading. Psychological scientists in Canada have been studying how people make food choices, and it appears that our deliberate estimates and calculations may not be much use to us.
