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Stop Asking ‘What Should I Do?’
New York Magazine: You’re stuck. You’ve got a problem — maybe an ethical dilemma, maybe a creative block — and are short a solution. What should you do? As it turns out, you might be asking yourself the wrong question. Or, more specifically, using one wrong word: Asking “What could I do?” instead of “What should I do?” can lead you to better, more creative answers, according to a recent working paper by a team of Harvard Business School professors. Asking yourself, for example, “What should I do with my life?” tacitly implies that there’s a right and a wrong answer to that question.
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Viewer Beware: Watching Reality TV Can Impact Real-Life Behavior
NPR: In the pilot episode of Jersey Shore, we're introduced in the first minute to the "new family": Snooki, JWoww, Vinny and the rest of the gang. A few minutes later, Snooki has already questioned JWoww's sexual morals. Vinny is calling Snooki stupid. The new family is already getting gossipy and aggressive. That unfriendly behavior is good for TV ratings, but it might be bad news for you, the viewer. A new study led by Bryan Gibson, a psychologist at Central Michigan University, finds watching reality shows with lots of what's called relational aggression — bullying, exclusion and manipulation — can make people more aggressive in their real lives. Read the whole story: NPR
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Experiences make you happier than ‘stuff,’ even before you buy
The Washington Post: Money can only buy you happiness if you spend it right. Previous research has shown that people value "experiences" like vacations and fancy meals more than they value material goods like cars and clothes. In a new study published in Psychological Science, researchers report that consumers actually enjoy waiting for experiences more, too. In the first part of the study, titled "Waiting for Merlot," 97 students were asked to imagine one type of purchase or another in their future and to rate their feelings as more like impatience or excitement.
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Of Myself I Sing
The New York Times: In April, Rebecca Makkai, a fiction writer, published a satirical piece on the blog for the literary magazine Ploughshares titled “Writers You Want to Punch in the Face(book).” In it, she depicted the Facebook posts of a fictional writer, Todd Manly-Krauss, who is “the world’s most irritating writer.” Her creation — illustrated by a photo of F. Scott Fitzgerald — is an insufferable and hilarious emblem of posturing machismo who boasts endlessly online about his professional successes (“I am exhausted but exhilarated from this whirlwind tour. Fifteen cities in twenty days!
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Rediscovering Our Mundane Moments Brings Us Unexpected Pleasure
We like to document the exciting and momentous occasions in our lives, but new research suggests there is value in capturing our more mundane, everyday experiences, which can bring us unexpected joy in the future. “We generally do not think about today’s ordinary moments as experiences that are worthy of being rediscovered in the future. However, our studies show that we are often wrong: What is ordinary now actually becomes more extraordinary in the future — and more extraordinary than we might expect,” explains psychological scientist and lead researcher Ting Zhang of Harvard Business School.
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‘Drawings may indicate later intelligence,’ according to new study
The Washington Post: Don’t throw away your kid’s stick figure drawings just yet. Researchers found a “moderate correlation” between drawing and intelligence, a link that “seemed to be influenced by genes,” according to a study by the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London. The test centered on identical and nonidentical twins, with 15,504 children participating. Each child was asked to draw a picture of a child and then given verbal and nonverbal intelligence tests. The children were first tested when they were 4 years old, and again 10 years later at age 14.
