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Meditation May Make You Nicer
Smithsonian Magazine: Traditional Buddhists meditate in the pursuit of enlightenment. Non-religious practitioners may try it out in order to find a bit of calm or perhaps to treat anxiety or depression. But whatever their motivation, people who meditate, new research shows, act nicer than those who don’t. Researchers from Harvard University and Northeastern University recruited around three dozen participants interested in meditation. Half of the group was put on a wait list, while the other half was split into two groups. These two groups participated in meditation sessions that promote calm and focus in the mind.
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Buffering Stress with Optimism
Everything from traffic to tests can cause us to “freak out,” yet some people naturally handle stress better than others. Joëlle Jobin, 2012 APSSC Student Research Award winner, wanted to see if being an optimist or a pessimist could change the way stress affects individuals. When we stress out, our bodies release cortisol, a steroid hormone from the adrenal gland. Too much cortisol can have an adverse effect. Jobin and Carsten Wrosch, both from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, tested the association among stress, cortisol, and the buffering effect of optimism.
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Get a grip on your stress now to avoid problems later
USA Today: Here's a good reason to get a grip on the stress in your life. If you handle stress poorly -- everything from conflicts at work to disagreements with your spouse to irritations like sitting in traffic jams -- it may put you at greater risk for anxiety disorders and other mental health issues 10 years later, a new study shows. Daily stressors can cause wear and tear on your emotional health, says Susan Charles, professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California-Irvine and lead author of the research. It's not the number of daily stressors, it's how you respond to them.
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In Sales, Confidence and Charisma May Not Seal the Deal
Think of a stereotypical salesperson and you’re likely to conjure up someone who’s extraverted, gregarious, and assertive. But a new study reveals that “ambiverts,” people who are neither introverted nor extraverted but who fall somewhere
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Calling a Bluff: Is It All in the Arms?
The Huffington Post: In a recent Radiolab interview, Duke talked about how she weighs risk and certainty and doubt in deciding to hold or fold. It's largely math, but not the straightforward odds of drawing to an inside straight. She computes odds and acceptable losses over long periods of time. Surprisingly, she said, she gets very little help from other players' "tells" -- the inadvertent facial expressions that give away emotions and intentions. Pros are very good at "disappearing" into the well-known "poker face." We all know the expression "poker face" because the face is where we expect to find meaningful information. But what if poker players are looking in the wrong place?
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What’s in a Label?
NPR Science Friday: On this week's show we're talking with Adam Alter, assistant professor of marketing and psychology at NYU's Stern School of Business and author of the new book Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave. In his book, Alter presents a wide breadth of research showing how forces we aren't aware of can shape our thoughts and behaviors. In the chapter called "Labels," Alter describes a set of experiments done by researchers at Stanford University who were trying to determine whether labeling someone as "black" or "white" affected perception of the person. Read the whole story: NPR Science Friday
