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The More You Think About Money, The Less People Like You
Business Insider: Subtle reminders of money can affect the way people behave in social settings, causing them to be less engaged with others, suggests new research. A group of researchers discussed results from ongoing investigations into how money impacts social relationships here at the 25th annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) on Sunday (May 26). "Money holds lots of different associations for different people," said Kathleen Vohs, an associate professor of marketing in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, who moderated an APS panel on the topic.
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Texting before bed linked to higher stress
The Boston Globe: In a study of more than 500 people, those who used technology before bedtime reported higher levels of stress than those who didn't, LiveScience reports on May 29. But the association wasn't found with all forms of technology: emailing or watching television before bed wasn't linked with greater stress. Other non-stressful pre-bed activities? Reading a book and exercising. In the study, researcher Israel Arevalo, a former psychology student at University of Texas-Pan American, recruited 500 subjects ages 18 to 73 who completed an online survey. Read the whole story: The Boston Globe
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Older Adult Clumsiness Linked to Brain Changes
Seniors use less effective reference frames to visualize nearby objects For many older adults, the aging process seems to go hand-in-hand with an annoying increase in clumsiness — difficulties dialing a phone, fumbling with keys in a lock or knocking over the occasional wine glass while reaching for a salt shaker.
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Munching Through Life’s Travails
The world is divided into Munchers and Skippers. I’m a Skipper, which means that, when living gets stressful, I stop eating. I don’t snack. I skip meals. Munchers, on the other hand, invented comfort food. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Chunky Monkey or Doritos or cheeseburgers. Calories are taken like a tonic against life’s mishaps. Traditionally, Munchers have been viewed as more pathetic than Skippers—and more of a problem. Feeding on calorie-dense foods shows lack of self-discipline, and leads to unhealthy weight gain. And given our high-stress modern lives, it’s likely that anxious munching is contributing to the nation’s obesity epidemic.
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Why teachers should present new material as stories
The Washington Post: In this post Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham writes about how students best learn new material. Willingham is a professor and director of graduate studies in psychology at the University of Virginia and author of “Why Don’t Students Like School?” His latest book is “When Can You Trust The Experts? How to tell good science from bad in education.” This appeared on his Science and Education blog. I have written before about the potential power of narrative to help students understand and remember complex subject matter (Willingham, 2004; 2009).
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Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer
TIME: Gregory Currie, a professor of philosophy at the University of Nottingham, recently argued in the New York Times that we ought not to claim that literature improves us as people, because there is no “compelling evidence that suggests that people are morally or socially better for reading Tolstoy” or other great books. Actually, there is such evidence.
