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Everyday Routines Make Life Feel More Meaningful
Scientific American: Think about the most meaningful experiences in your life. You will probably recall your wedding, or a trip across Europe, or your first skydive. You won't name brushing your teeth. Yet recent research suggests that the mundane regularities of life can very much contribute to your overall sense of meaning. As squishy as the concept sounds, meaning in life is an integral part of our well-being. Research has associated it with good mental health, success at work and longevity. Psychologists have proposed three aspects: significance, purpose and coherence. In other words, life is meaningful when it feels important, when it seems to have a point and when it makes sense.
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How to Make Online Dating Work
The New York Times: WE turn to screens for nearly every decision. Where to eat. Where to vacation. Where to eat on vacation. Where to get treatment for the food poisoning you got at that restaurant where you ate on vacation. Where to write a negative review calling out the restaurant that gave you food poisoning and ruined your vacation. So it’s no surprise our screens are becoming the first place we turn to when looking for romance — because you need someone to take care of you when you get food poisoning on your vacation, right? One of the most amazing social changes is the rise of online dating and the decline of other ways of meeting a romantic partner.
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On the Horizon: Virtual Reality Therapy that Treats Chronic Pain
Scientific American: Strap on a headset, immerse yourself in an alternate reality and cure your pain—that's the idea of a recent study in Psychological Science. Most people think of pain as something that happens in the body—I twist my head too far, and my neck sends a “pain signal” to the brain to indicate that the twisting hurts. In reality, pain is simply the brain telling us we are in danger. Although certain nerve endings throughout the body can indeed detect bodily harm, their signals are only one factor that the brain uses to determine if we should experience pain. Many cases of chronic pain are thought to be the result of obsolete brain associations between movement and pain. ...
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Why Superstitions Help Athletes Perform Better
New York Magazine: In his acclaimed book The Game, Hall of Fame NHL goaltender Ken Dryden described some of the various superstitions he picked up over the years, from nodding at a particular Montreal Forum usherette before home games to shooting a puck off a certain part of the boards at the start of pregame warm-ups. “I don’t tell anyone about them, I’m not proud I have them, I know I should be strong enough to decide one morning, any morning, no longer to be a prisoner to them," he wrote. "Yet I seem helpless to do anything about it.” ... Dr.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Competence Judgments Based on Facial Appearance Are Better Predictors of American Elections Than of Korean Elections Jinkyung Na, Seunghee Kim, Hyewon Oh, Incheol Choi, and Alice O'Toole To examine cultural differences in the importance of face-trait judgments, the researchers showed American and Korean participants pairs of images consisting of both the winner and the runner-up of an American or a Korean election. For each image pair, participants indicated which person they thought was the most competent and which person they would be most likely to vote for.
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Here’s a simple trick to perform better in stressful situations
Business Insider: Most of us know how nerve-wracking it can be to lead a presentation at work. There are the nightmares beforehand about showing up naked to the conference room; the shaky legs and sweaty palms during the actual meeting; and the rumination afterward over your performance. Fortunately, there may be a relatively simple way to alleviate much of this anxiety: Talk to yourself like you'd talk to someone else in the same situation. According to research led by University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross, Ph.D., using either your first name or the pronoun "you" instead of "I" can make it easier to deal with stressful experiences. Read the whole story: Business Insider
