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Giving Time Can Give You Time
We all know that our objective amount of time can’t be increased, but a new study suggests that volunteering our limited time—giving it away— may actually increase our sense of unhurried leisure.
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Board Member Lisa Feldman Barrett Receives Highest Canadian Scholarly Award
APS Board Member Lisa Feldman Barrett was recently elected to the Royal Society of Canada (RSC): The Academies of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences of Canada. Barrett, who is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, received her PhD from the University of Waterloo. Her laboratory, the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory, investigates the nature of emotion and the brain’s creation of the mind. Experiential, behavioral, psychophysiology, and brain-imaging methods are all used in her research. The Society consists of elected Canadian citizens or residents who have made outstanding contributions to the arts, humanities, sciences, and Canadian public life.
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It really IS happy hour, study finds
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: They didn’t exactly raise the bar on alcohol-related fact-finding. University of Pittsburgh researchers recently released a study concluding that moderate amounts of booze, consumed while socializing, increases the likelihood of people feeling pleasant and bonding with others. In short, the analysis concluded that drinking in a group is a more positive experience than drinking alone. If those findings sound familiar, it’s because they almost mirror those of generations of folks who conducted research and found that having cocktails with chums is fun.
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How to Make Optimism Work for You
The New York Times: My recent column on optimism drew hundreds of comments from readers who testified to the value of living life as a glass half full. But one in particular — from a 90-year-old man living in Calabasas, Calif. — was especially telling. The reader, William Richmond, wrote that a phrase in the column, “Fake it until you make it,” summed up his long and very successful life. His approach to life could serve as a battle plan for the millions of recent college graduates now searching for work in an unforgiving job market, as well as for older adults trying to re-enter the workplace after a long hiatus and those who lost jobs and must now reinvent themselves. ...
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Eons after words, why do humans still need body language?
msnbc: Flat screens, phones and laptops soon will blaze with a body-language blitz: sweaty palms clasping mouths in disbelief, muscled arms folded in disagreement and – the sweetest Olympic pose – two fists hoisted aloft in displays of golden bliss. “That position – the arms raised high – evokes triumph and it’s very ancient,” says Margaret J. King, director of the Center for Cultural Studies & Analysis in Philadelphia. ... “We still use body language because that’s the way our brains worked (eons) years ago when we first became human,” King said.
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Something for the weekend
Financial Times: The lamentation that there are not enough hours in the day is a familiar one. Busy working schedules combined with family life often mean that individuals feel unable to commit to additional duties such as joining a committee at work or volunteering at the local school. But new research from academics suggests that by spending time on others – helping a failing student to edit an essay or helping out at the local club for the elderly for example – can counter-intuitively create a feeling of expanded time.
