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La tristezza ci “costa” davvero: si è meno prudenti economicamente (Financial costs of sadness)
la Repubblica: "SADDER but wiser" ("Più triste ma più prudente") diceva due secoli fa il filosofo inglese Samuel T. Coleridge, sostenendo l'idea che la tristezza proteggesse l'uomo dalle scelte sconvenienti. Il detto viene oggi smentito, almeno in ambito finanziario, da uno studio scientifico condotto dalla Harvard e dalla Columbia University negli Stati Uniti, che dimostra come questa emozione negativa sia in grado di condizionare il nostro comportamento in situazioni di scelta economica.
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Kristen M. Kennedy
The University of Texas at Dallas http://bbs.utdallas.edu/people/detail.php5?i=1061 What does your research focus on? I am most generally interested in brain-behavior relationships as we age, or the cognitive neuroscience of aging. Specifically, I study how changes to the brain’s structure with age correspond to the changes we see in cognition as we age. Interestingly, there is not a one-to-one relationship in this process because our brains are malleable to cope with the biological effects of aging, and our cognitive strategies may also re-arrange to cope with decrements to brain structure.
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Negative Emotions in Response to Daily Stress Take a Toll on Long-Term Mental Health
Our emotional responses to the stresses of daily life may predict our long-term mental health, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Psychological scientist Susan Charles of the University of California, Irvine and colleagues conducted the study in order to answer a long-standing question: Do daily emotional experiences add up to make the straw that breaks the camel’s back, or do these experiences make us stronger and provide an inoculation against later distress?
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Mindfulness May Improve Test Scores
Scientific American: There’s a meditation practice called “mindfulness” that is about actively focusing on the present moment and increasing one’s attention span. Recently scientists analyzed whether such a practice could help improve undergrads’ test scores in the Graduate Record Exams, the GREs. The idea is that if we limit mind wandering, our ability to focus improves, and so will our cognitive ability. [The paper is published in the journal Psychological Science. The researchers had 24 undergrads attend a mindfulness course and another 24 go to a nutrition class. Each 45-minute class met eight times over two weeks. Read the whole story: Scientific American
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After You Read the Listings, Your Agent Reads You
The New York Times: Every saleswoman will tell you that the customer is always transparent. Maybe not entirely, completely, but compared with the poker face a buyer thinks that he or she is wearing, there are always expressions and signals that are obvious to the practiced observer. When I first started out in Manhattan real estate sales, my boss shrugged and shared one of his favorites with me. “People with clipboards,” he said, “never buy.” Whenever I tell that anecdote, I get resistance from someone who claims to have been carrying a clipboard right before buying a kazillion-dollar-apartment in One57, and if I weren’t so quick to jump to conclusions, why then I’d have my own yacht.
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The Dangers of Social Isolation
Wired: You say you want to be alone? Think again. Researchers have found that older people with fewer human contacts are more likely to die—even if they’re happy in their solitude—than are people with richer social lives. The study adds to the debate over whether loneliness, social isolation, or some combination of the two leads to higher mortality. ... Other studies, including an analysis of older Americans led by John Cacioppo, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago in Illinois, have shown a link between loneliness and a higher death rate.
