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To make better food choices, wait before you decide
CTV News: Whether you choose celery or chocolate could be a question of how quickly your brain takes healthfulness into account, according to a new study by a team of neuroeconomists at the California Institute of Technology. "What we wanted to find out was at what point the taste of the foods starts to become integrated into the choice process, and at what point health is integrated," says lead author Nicolette Sullivan, a graduate student at Caltech.
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You Are Built to Be Kind
New York Magazine: Let's take a few minutes this dreary winter Wednesday to remind ourselves that people aren't always the worst. In a neat little animated video published yesterday by the University of California, Berkeley, psychologist Dacher Keltner explains that we were essentially built to be nice. Keltner explains his own work using brain imaging technology, in which he's shown images of human suffering to people in the lab. Read the whole story: New York Magazine
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Why Tom Brady’s F-Bombs Are A-OK
Boston.com: Nope, when it came to Brady and his F-Bombs, we pulled an anti-Rolling Stone and decided to do some reporting. In 2012, the Association for Psychological Science published a piece called "The Science of Swearing" in which its authors studied more than 10,000 episodes of public swearing by adults and children. "Swearing can occur with any emotion and yield positive or negative outcomes. Our work so far suggests that most uses of swear words are not problematic . . . and rarely have we witnessed negative consequences," authors Timothy Jay and Kristin Janschewitz wrote. Read the whole story: Boston.com
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Hugs help protect against the common cold, research finds
PBS: Flu season is upon us, and doctors are predicting that this year’s epidemic could be especially severe. What steps are you taking to protect yourself from disease this winter? Stocking up on hand sanitizer? Chugging orange juice? Avoiding handshakes and crowded subway cars? How about hugging your friends? Wait, what? A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that frequent hugging helps reduce individuals’ susceptibility to infections associated with stress, and reduces the severity of symptoms if an infection is contracted by providing increased social support.
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Chatting About Time Management With The Godfather Of Irrationality, Dan Ariely
Forbes: If you’ve spent any time in the psychology and self improvement sections of any bookstore, you know that Dan Ariely quite literally wrote the book on human irrationality. With bestsellers likePredictably Irrational and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, Ariely is a go-to source for knowledge about why we do what we do, even when doing it just doesn’t make much sense. Now Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics atDuke University, has turned his attention to another topic that vexes the best of us: time management.
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The power of believing that you can improve
TED: Carol Dweck researches “growth mindset” — the idea that we can grow our brain's capacity to learn and to solve problems. In this talk, she describes two ways to think about a problem that’s slightly too hard for you to solve. Are you not smart enough to solve it … or have you just not solved it yet? A great introduction to this influential field. Watch the video: TED
