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Why Thinking About Your Death May Prompt You to Save the Planet
TIME: Thinking about your own death isn’t usually the most pleasant experience, but it can be a beneficial one. Reminders of our own mortality can increase our desire to make decisions that will leave long-term, positive impacts on generations to come, according to a new study published in Psychological Science. Momentary social cues about death, such as reading about a death in the newspaper or walking past a funeral hall, activate the “legacy motive,” which contributes to the drive to gain a sense of purpose in life and to make an impact that will live on after death.
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Study: Children Internalize Stereotypes About Abilities
Education Week: Have you ever heard a girl say she hates math because she's "no good" at it? I've heard it plenty of times, even from my own daughter who actually has an aptitude for the subject. Research has shown that children believe their ability to do certain things depends on how much natural ability they have for the task. These so-called "entity theories" can affect their performance. And now a recent study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that involved 4- to 7-year-olds suggests that children can adopt these beliefs from information they hear about their gender or certain social groups.
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Anxiety Disorders Diagnosed More Often in Women Than Men
The Wall Street Journal: Women are twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with anxiety disorders—and the reasons range from hormonal fluctuations to brain chemistry to upbringing to empathy, researchers theorize. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, chair of the department of psychology at Yale, says one reason women are more anxious is that they tend to take responsibility for other peoples’ happiness, especially their children’s and spouse’s. “It’s kind of a Catch-22, because they can’t always do anything about them,” says Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema, author of “The Power of Women” and other books.
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Did You Ever Wonder Whether Rats Laugh?
Scientific American: Jaak Panksepp of Washington State University woke up one morning and told his students: “let’s go tickle some rats.” Panksepp wondered whether the rat chirps his laboratory had been studying were actually a form of animal laughter. Panksepp recounts what he found in this video and in an account of his work by Jesse Bering in a chapter from Bering’s new book Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? . . . And Other Reflections on Being Human, published this year by Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Read the whole story: Scientific American
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To Think Outside the Box, It Helps to Have a Box
Bloomberg Business Week: Literally following metaphors of creative thinking—actually sitting “outside the box” to complete word tasks, for example—enhances creative problem-solving, according to a recent study by the University of Michigan Ross School of Business professors Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks and Suntae Kim. To draw these conclusions, they assembled a team of international researchers who conducted five studies with nearly 400 college students who literally followed metaphors. Participants, for instance, generated ideas while first holding out their left hand and then their right hand to test “on the one hand, then on the other hand.” Read the whole story: Bloomberg Business Week
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Thirtysomethings flex their number sense
ScienceNews: Even 6-month-old babies can rapidly estimate approximate numbers of items without counting. But surprisingly, an apparently inborn sense for numbers doesn’t top out until around age 30. Number sense precision gradually declines after that, generally falling to preteen levels by about age 70, say psychologist Justin Halberda of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and his colleagues. They report the findings, based on Internet testing of more than 10,000 volunteers ages 11 to 85, online the week of June 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
