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Study of the Day: The Personality Trait for Post-Divorce Resilience
The Atlantic: PROBLEM: The end of a marriage is a painful experience. Still, why do some divorcees recover easily while others flounder? METHODOLOGY: The researchers enlisted 105 divorcees who were married for over 13 years for the study. They were asked to think about their former partner for 30 seconds and then to talk for four minutes about their separation. Four trained coders listened to the audio recordings of these sessions and rated the participants' levels of self-compassion -- a combination of kindness toward oneself, recognition of common humanity, and the ability to let painful emotions pass.
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How politeness can have disastrous consequences
Zee News: Washington: Politeness helps us get through awkward social situations and makes it easier for us to maintain our relationships. But a new study suggests that politeness can have disastrous consequences, especially in high-stakes situations. According to authors Jean-François Bonnefon and Wim de Neys of CNRS and Université de Toulouse and Aidan Feeney of Queen’s University, we resort to politeness strategies when we have to share information that might offend or embarrass someone or information that suggests someone has made a mistake or a bad choice. The more sensitive an issue is, the more likely we are to use these kinds of politeness strategies.
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Do programs that pay people to lose weight really work?
The Washington Post: What if someone would pay you to lose weight? Not a token amount from your meddling fitness freak brother-in-law, but serious cash, say $10,000? Would you try it? But what if you had to put some skin in the game, 60 of your hard-earned dollars for the chance to win that $10,000 or smaller prizes of $5,000 and $3,000? And what if you had to do this at the office, with a team of co-workers who would monitor your progress, or lack thereof, and whose chances at a payoff depended on you? Deal breaker or motivator?
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Study links bribery with collectivism
Toronto Sun: Bribery is viewed as morally wrong across cultures, but the question remains why some places are more prone to corruption than others. According to research by Pankaj Aggarwal and Nina Mazar, two professors at the University of Toronto, part of the answer seems to be the level of collective feeling in a society. The team discovered that people in more collectivist cultures – in which individuals see themselves as interdependent and as part of a larger society – are more likely to offer bribes than people from more individualistic cultures.
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Study: Nurturing mother plays role in future health
Chicago Sun-Times: Poor children are more likely to become unhealthy adults — vulnerable to infection and disease — than kids from higher-income families, according to a new study. However, the study findings revealed, some disadvantaged children grow up into healthy adults. Their secret: a nurturing and attentive mother. Upward mobility also has been cited as a reason that children from low-income families become healthy adults, the study pointed out. Yet the researchers found that income in adulthood didn’t offset childhood poverty.
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Virginia Tech announces national addiction registry
Virginia Tech News: ROANOKE, Va., Oct. 6, 2011 – C.W. started getting high when he was only 13. "I started off sniffing gasoline out of a lawnmower, then moved on to beer, wine, and marijuana," he said. Soon he was snorting cocaine, taking speed, and basing major life decisions — dropping out of high school, leaving the military, quitting a stable job, even abandoning his family — on his need to get high. He eventually found himself dodging drug dealers who were threatening to kill him over his mounting debt. It was a near-fatal accident that ended up saving C.W.'s life.
