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Do You Wanna Know a Secret?
The New York Times: The revelation that the National Security Agency has been secretly amassing huge amounts of data about Americans’ phone and Internet use has sparked a lively debate about the proper role of secret information in a free and open society. The crux of the debate is whether the value of secret information justifies the sacrifice of personal privacy. If secret information yields valuable intelligence that can be used to protect Americans, the reasoning goes, then it is worth sacrificing privacy for security. But there is a major problem with evaluating information labeled “secret”: people tend to inflate the value of “secret” information simply because it is secret.
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What Did Narcissus Say To Instagram? Selfie Time!
NPR: In these hyper-connected, over-shared times dwell two kinds of people: those preoccupied with taking and uploading photos of themselves and those who have never heard of the selfie. ... But Pamela Rutledge doesn't see it that way. The director of the nonprofit Media Psychology Research Center, which explores how humans interact with technology, sees the selfie as democratizing the once-snooty practice of self-portraiture, a tradition that long predates Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. She sees some key differences between selfies and self-portraits of yore. Unlike painted portraiture, selfies are easily deletable.
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Training Can Increase Empathy
Scientific American: Can you train someone to be a nicer person? A recent study using meditation techniques shows that it might be possible. The research is published in the journal Psychological Science. [Helen Y. Weng et al, Compassion Training Alters Altruism and Neural Responses to Suffering] One group of subjects learned to practice what’s called “compassionate meditation” by focusing on a specific person while repeating a phrase like, “May you be free from suffering.” Read the whole story: Scientific American
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The Power of a ‘Project Beard’ and Other Office Rituals
The Wall Street Journal: Rituals are common among gamblers and sports figures, from wearing a lucky shirt to blowing on dice to counting dribbles before a free throw. Now researchers are finding that rituals help on the job too. People who engage in ritualistic behavior before a difficult task are less anxious, get more involved and tend to perform better than people who didn't have a ritual, according to research at Harvard Business School, the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management and other universities. ...
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Self-Disciplined People Are Happier (and Not as Deprived as You Think)
TIME: It’s easy to think of the highly self-disciplined as being miserable misers or uptight Puritans, but it turns out that exerting self-control can make you happier not only in the long run, but also in the moment. The research, which was published in the Journal of Personality, showed that self-control isn’t just about deprivation, but more about managing conflicting goals.
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Getting Kids to Eat Their Veggies: A New Approach to an Age-Old Problem
Every parent has a different strategy for trying to get his or her kid to eat more vegetables, from growing vegetables together as a family to banning treats until the dinner plate is clean. New research suggests that teaching young children an overarching, conceptual framework for nutrition may do the trick. The new findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that a conceptual framework encourages children to understand why eating a variety of foods is ideal and also causes them to eat more vegetables by choice.
