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Ritalin and Other Cognitive-Enhancing Drugs Probably Won’t Make You Smarter
Scientific American: On Monday, I put up a post on whether we would ever be able to upload our brains into a computer, merging ourselves into the great digital Singularity that would provide us with eternal life—and virtually infinite sensory powers and intelligence. The take home: This is akin to a cargo cult-like religion. Don’t hold your breath (or freeze your brain) in anticipation.
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Impatient? It Could Be The Reason Your Credit Score Stinks
Business Insider: Those who exert more patience and are willing to wait for larger financial payouts down the line have credit scores an average of 30 points higher than those who are less patient, according to a study to be published in the journal Psychological Science next month. Time Moneyland's Martha White reports that Stephan Meier and Charles Sprenger, professors at Columbia and Stanford, respectively, found that people who need instant gratification are also more likely to pay their credit cards late or skip a payment altogether. Impatient consumers want to feel the immediate benefit of cash in the bank, which outweighs the benefit of not paying interest or late fees.
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What Surveys Don’t Know About You
The Wall Street Journal: Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture riffs today on how meaningless he finds the National Retail Federation surveys of how much consumers expect to spend at holiday time. His table of year-over-year changes in expected vs. actual spending is an eye-opener. The same phenomenon has been documented by social scientists for decades: People are almost freakishly inept at forecasting their future behavior. That’s largely because you predict your future behavior by assessing how you feel now about a decision you won’t be making for some time to come. Your assessment of how you think you will feel in the future depends very largely on how you feel in the present.
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Wie Gesichter in der Erinnerung bleiben
Der Spiegel: Auge, Nase, Mund - wer Gesichter nur als Summe ihrer Bestandteile wahrnimmt, erkennt sie später schlechter wieder. Wer das Antlitz seines Gegenübers allerdings im Ganzen wahrnimmt, wird sich später eher an die Person erinnern. Das berichten Forscher von der chinesischen Beijing Normal University in dem Fachjournal "Psychological Science". "Im täglichen Leben nehmen wir unsere Welt sowohl holistisch, also im großen Ganzen wahr, aber auch analytisch, also in ihren Details", sagt der Autor der Studie, Liu Jia. Während das Gehirn generell alle möglichen Objekte wie Autos, Tiere und Häuser analysiere, sei für Gesichter eine ganzheitliche Verarbeitung bedeutsam.
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Breast-Feeding Is Important to Mother-Baby Bonding
TIME: Breast milk may be the key to mother-baby bonding, according to research that found that breast-feeding mothers demonstrate stronger brain responses when they hear their baby cry. They're also more likely than formula-feeding moms to bond with their babies, says a study published in the May issue of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Researchers at the Child Study Center at Yale University performed functional MRIs (fMRIs) on nine breast-feeding moms and eight formula feeders about a month after their babies were born. Participants listened to clips of their own baby and an unknown child crying, as researchers analyzed which areas of their brains lit up.
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Awakening Your Inner Materialist
I don’t see myself as especially materialistic, and you probably don’t see yourself that way either. The fact is, I don’t know anyone who actually takes pride in acquiring more and more stuff, and many of my friends decry the commercialization of the holiday season. That’s a good thing, because all the evidence says that people who are preoccupied with possessions are not very happy people. Consumerism is linked to anxiety, lousy relationships, and poor mental and physical health. But let’s not get too self-righteous quite yet. We may not derive our core sense of self-worth from what we buy and own, but does that mean we’re immune to all the cues in our consumer culture?
