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Avere la “testa fra le nuvole” stimola la creatività (Having the “head in the clouds” stimulates creativity)
La Stampa: Sognare a occhi aperti non è più da considerare un “male” ma, secondo un nuovo studio, è sintomo di creatività. Al contrario di quanto avviene in chi invece sta, per così dire, con i piedi per terra Sognare a occhi aperti, avere la testa fra le nuvole… tutti modi per definire una situazione che si è sempre considerata sbagliata e da evitare – specie tra i banchi di scuola. Da sempre infatti si è tenuto più in grande considerazione chi ha i cosiddetti piedi per terra – tanto per usare un altro modo di dire.
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Academic ‘Dream Team’ Helped Obama’s Effort
The New York Times: Late last year Matthew Barzun, an official with the Obama campaign, called Craig Fox, a psychologist in Los Angeles, and invited him to a political planning meeting in Chicago, according to two people who attended the session. “He said, ‘Bring the whole group; let’s hear what you have to say,’ ” recalled Dr. Fox, a behavioral economist at the University of California, Los Angeles. So began an effort by a team of social scientists to help their favored candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Some members of the team had consulted with the Obama campaign in the 2008 cycle, but the meeting in January signaled a different direction.
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Brainy Babies – Research Explores Infants’ Skills and Abilities
Infants seem to develop at an astoundingly rapid pace, learning new things and acquiring new skills every day. And research suggests that the abilities that infants demonstrate early on can shape the development of skills later in life, in childhood and beyond. Read about the latest research on infant development published in the November 2012 issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. How Do You Learn to Walk? Thousands of Steps and Dozens of Falls per Day Karen E. Adolph, Whitney G. Cole, Meghana Komati, Jessie S. Garciaguirre, Daryaneh Badaly, Jesse M. Lingeman, Gladys L. Y. Chan, and Rachel B. Sotsky How do babies learn to walk?
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The Shame of the Alcoholic
This month in Cleveland, a woman was caught swerving her car onto a sidewalk, illegally passing a school bus full of children. A judge sentenced her to stand on the street corner wearing a sign that read: “Only an idiot would drive around a school bus.” In Arlington, Texas, a billboard features mug shots of suspected johns, with the words: “This could be you.” Arlington is one of many American communities going out of their way to publicly humiliate men who buy sex, while other towns are similarly targeting shoplifters and drunk drivers. And it’s not just judges: Parents around the country are also forcing their kids to wear signs—like “I am a thief”—to shame them into moral action.
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I costi (finanziari) della tristezza (The financial costs of sadness)
Corriere Della Sera: La tristezza, come se non fosse sufficiente da sola, comporta anche una perdita monetaria. E non perché si cerca di curarla con sedute psicanalitiche (o almeno non solo), ma perché i momenti di costernazione sono spesso forieri di azioni sconsiderate in campo economico. Quando tutto sembra andare storto, quando si riescono a stento a ingoiare le lacrime e una profonda sensazione di desolazione ci avvolge, non è il momento di fare acquisti, perché l’unhappiness (tristezza) è nemica giurata dei giusti investimenti: lo sostiene uno studio americano e lo dimostra la vita. Jennifer Lerner dell’Harvard Kennedy School of Government e i colleghi Yi Le e Elke U.
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Power Posing: Fake It Until You Make It
Nightly Business Report: We can’t be the alpha dog all of the time. Whatever our personality, most of us experience varying degrees of feeling in charge. Some situations take us down a notch while others build us up. New research shows that it’s possible to control those feelings a bit more, to be able to summon an extra surge of power and sense of well-being when it’s needed: for example, during a job interview or for a key presentation to a group of skeptical customers. “Our research has broad implications for people who suffer from feelings of powerlessness and low self-esteem due to their hierarchical rank or lack of resources,” says HBS assistant professor Amy J.C.
