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What Is Happiness?
The Atlantic: At this year's Aspen Ideas Festival, we asked a group of professors, psychologists, and journalists how they would define happiness. According to Eli Finkel, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, the definition is twofold: "It seems to me that happiness is some blend of experience of pleasure and the experience of meaning and fulfillment in life," he says. "I think much more of the latter than the former." Other panelists include Tim Kasser, Susan Greenfield, Brian Grazer, Paul Bloom, Suleika Jaouad, Robert D. Putnam, and Jennifer Senior. Read the whole story: The Atlantic
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A simple choice between two gorgeous photos reveals your personality
The Washington Post: Check out the two gorgeous photos below. If you had to choose one place to go on vacation, where would you go: the beach or the mountains? If you said the beach, you’re in the majority. More people pick the beach than the mountains. And since it’s August, you may be dreaming of a dip in the ocean. But beyond the summer heat, your choice may depend on your personality. According to a new study from psychologists at the University of Virginia, introverts and extroverts prefer different landscapes for their vacations, and they may even seek out different environments for a home. Read the whole story: The Washington Post
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Capacity for Visual Features in Mental Rotation Yangqing Xu and Steven L. Franconeri Despite researchers' interest in mental rotation -- the ability of people to rotate the visual representation of objects in their mind -- there is still much we don't know about it. To learn more about this ability, the researchers performed a series of studies, some including eye tracking, in which participants were asked to mentally rotate simple objects with four differently colored parts. Participants were able to keep track of only one of the color-location feature links during the rotation task.
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Where’s the Scientific Research Into How Sexual Orientation Develops in Women?
Slate: When I scroll through the biomedical research into how sexual orientation develops (don't judge my hobbies), I notice three things. The first one's obvious: Compared with, say, erectile dysfunction or male pattern baldness, there's not much research into the biological origins of sexual orientation. The second is a triumph of science. Researchers have figured out that men are more likely to be gay if they have older biological brothers from the same mother, or if they inherit certain genes from their mothers, some of which seem to be the same genes that make their female relatives more fertile. But the third thing I notice is something that isn't there.
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This new rule could reveal the huge gap between CEO pay and worker pay
The Washington Post: Thousands of public U.S. companies are likely to soon be forced to share a number many would rather keep under wraps: how much more their chief executives make than their typical rank-and-file employees. The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to finalize on Wednesday a long-delayed rule forcing businesses to share their "pay ratio," a simple bit of arithmetic that would cast an unprecedented spotlight on one of corporate America's thorniest debates.
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The Citizen Preschooler
The Atlantic: One morning this past April, scores of preschoolers and kindergarteners dragged their grownups into the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The children had created an exhibit demonstrating their perceptions of the nation’s capital and what it means to belong to the city. In one gallery, there was a replica of the D.C. Metro routes, made from neon-colored plastic pipes. In another were cardboard, foam, and popsicle-stick models of the children’s dream playgrounds. Over the course of the morning, a signboard asking “what does it mean to be a citizen?” bloomed with more and more bright sticky notes containing answers to that question.
