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Can We End the Meditation Madness?
The New York Times: I AM being stalked by meditation evangelists. They approach with the fervor of a football fan attacking a keg at a tailgate party. “Which method of meditation do you use?” I admit that I don’t meditate, and they are incredulous. It’s as if I’ve just announced that the Earth is flat. “How could you not meditate?!” I have nothing against it. I just happen to find it dreadfully boring. ... After spending the past four decades studying mindfulness without meditation, the Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer has identified plenty of other techniques for raising our conscious awareness of the present.
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The Power of Precise Predictions
The New York Times: IS there a solution to this country’s polarized politics? Consider the debate over the nuclear deal with Iran, which was one of the nastiest foreign policy fights in recent memory. There was apocalyptic rhetoric, multimillion-dollar lobbying on both sides and a near-party-line Senate vote. But in another respect, the dispute was hardly unique: Like all policy debates, it was, at its core, a contest between competing predictions. Opponents of the deal predicted that the agreement would not prevent Iran from getting the bomb, would put Israel at greater risk and would further destabilize the region.
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THE SCIENCE OF WHEN YOU NEED IN-PERSON COMMUNICATION
Fast Company: In the debate over whether people should work in the office, or remotely, the in-the-office folks have one good point. A lot of things happen when we interact face-to-face that don’t necessarily happen virtually. Human beings had little ability to communicate with those who weren’t physically close to them until the past century, and our brains don’t evolve as rapidly as technology. Fortunately, understanding the science of what happens when people interact in person helps us see what’s best done that way, and when virtual meetings are fine. ...
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Look Who’s Talking
Slate: It can be startling when you first hear it: otherwise reasonable friends spouting their dogs' inner monologues, as if it’s only natural for them to speak out loud. Is that food stop choking me I need that food, the strange voice might say. I am a dog give me that OK thanks look a tree. ... “The first thing people do is treat their pets like people, so a precondition is that they perceive minds in their pets,” said Kurt Gray, an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: The Unhappy Triad: Pain, Sleep Complaints, and Internalizing Symptoms Erin Koffel, Erin E. Krebs, Paul A. Arbisi, Christopher R. Erbes, and Melissa A. Polusny Chronic pain, sleep complaints, and anxiety/depression are three significant sources of distress that incur great personal and societal costs. Two competing theories describing the relationships among these factors suggest that internalizing symptoms mediate the relationship between sleep complaints and pain or that pain mediates the relationship between sleep complaints and internalizing symptoms.
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HHS to Hold Town Hall Meeting on Proposed ‘Common Rule’ Revisions
The US government’s Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) will hold a public Town Hall Meeting on October 20, 2015 in Washington, DC to answer questions about proposed updates to the so-called Common Rule governing human subject research. The meeting will be conducted by a panel of officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the OHRP. The meeting is part of a public comment period on a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on the Common Rule revisions. HHS will take those comments into consideration as it drafts a final set of standards.
