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Bad Habit? You Can Forget About It
Discovery News: Want to stop biting your nails? Forget that you learned how. New research published in Psychological Science shows that purposefully wiping your memory of learning a new habit can help undo it. Participants who got in the habit of responding to certain words by striking a key with their right or left hand were able to forget those associations when told that the computer had crashed and instructed to forget what they’d learned. Half the participants weren’t told of the crash, and didn’t forget. Read the whole story: Discovery News
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Is Postpartum Depression a Disease of Modern Civilization?
In the current issue of The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert describes her family’s brief and not entirely successful experiment with the Paleolithic diet. Her account is humorous, but it also explores some of the science underlying this popular style of eating, which basically avoids everything but meat, tubers and fresh fruits and vegetables. The idea behind “Paleo” meals and menus is to get back to the healthier diet that our ancient ancestors consumed before the advent of agriculture, which has led to all sorts of dietary and lifestyle changes—and to a host of modern diseases.
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The troubling flaws in how we select experts
The Washington Post: Organizations are constantly scouring the earth for the talent or perfect expert that will provide the fresh edge and perspective needed to overcome the challenging obstacles that stand in their way to the top. In their pursuit of excellence however, you may be shocked to learn the criteria they use to define credibility and expertise may be severely flawed. Many of us can think to a time we made a recommendation to a boss, superior or heck, even a family member only to be completely brushed off. I know I’ve been in this boat before. It’s frustrating, but the problem goes beyond simple indifference. Almost 25 percent of workers are ignored at work.
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Science Still Doesn’t Understand Video Games
Pacific Standard: Last spring, Gunwoo Yoon, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recruited 194 undergraduates and tasked them with blasting their way through a Space Invaders-style video game. After five minutes of play, he gave each student a cup filled with chocolate or chili sauce. Give it a taste, he said, and spoon some onto a plastic dish for the next participant. That person will have to clear the plate. Yoon told everyone the game and food components of the experiment were unrelated, but this was a lie.
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Cultural Stereotypes May Evolve From Sharing Social Information
Millenials are narcissistic, scientists are geeky, and men like sports -- or so cultural stereotypes would have us believe. Regardless of whether we believe them to be true, we all have extensive knowledge of cultural stereotypes. But how does this information become associated with certain groups in the first place? Research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that cultural stereotypes are the unintended but inevitable consequence of sharing social information.
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More Breaks May Help You Go With the “Flow” at Work
Giving employees more breaks and vacation time may actually help improve their performance on the job by increasing their experiences of “flow,” according to new research. It’s common for people to feel tired after work, but after taking time off for a vacation or a fun evening out they’re likely to feel refreshed or recovered. According to the effort-recovery model (ERM), this occurs because people require a reserve of cognitive resources to maintain performance throughout the day. When demands are reduced, such as during leisure time, cognitive resources are restored. In a recent study, a group of psychological scientists led by Maike E.
