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Reading fiction ‘improves empathy’, study finds
The Guardian: Burying your head in a novel isn't just a way to escape the world: psychologists are increasingly finding that reading can affect our personalities. A trip into the world of Stephenie Meyer, for example, actually makes us feel like vampires. Researchers from the University at Buffalo gave 140 undergraduates passages from either Meyer's Twilight or JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to read, with the vampire group delving into an extract in which Edward Cullen tells his teenage love interest Bella what it is like to be a vampire, and the wizardly readers getting a section in which Harry and his cohorts are "sorted" into Hogwarts houses.
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Managing The Psychological Bias Against Creativity
Forbes: You come up with a great new idea at work, or at home. Or a political leader actually tries something “new and different” when faced with a previously intractable problem. But then, rather than grateful acceptance, or even a fair hearing, the idea is squashed, ridiculed, or otherwise ignored. Sound familiar? It should. As anyone who has ever suggested a creative solution knows, people often avoid the uncomfortable uncertainty of novel solutions regardless of potential benefit.
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Researchers Find That Wisdom Really Does Come With Age
The Chronicle of Higher Education: The adage “with age comes wisdom” may actually ring true, according to psychologists at Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin. By examining how aging affects decision-making, researchers concluded that older adults use the experience in decision-making accumulated over their lifetime to determine the long-term utility and not just the immediate benefit before making a choice. However, younger adults tend to focus their decision-making on instant gratification, says Darrell Worthy, a professor of psychology at Texas A&M.
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Sound, the Way the Brain Prefers to Hear It
New York Times: There is, perhaps, no more uplifting musical experience than hearing the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s “Messiah” performed in a perfect space. Many critics regard Symphony Hall in Boston — 70 feet wide, 120 feet long and 65 feet high — as just that space. Some 3,000 miles away, however, a visitor led into the pitch-blackness of Chris Kyriakakis’s audio lab at the University of Southern California to hear a recording of the performance would have no way to know how big the room was. At first it sounded like elegant music played in the parlor on good equipment. Nothing special.
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On 9/11 Americans were more than angry
Examiner: A study in 2010 by three scientists showed that on September 11, 2001, the air was sizzling with anger — and the anger got hotter as the hours passed. That analysis was obtained by employing a commonly used tool called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), which teases out information from the frequency of word usages in texts on the 85,000 pages of messages sent that day. Yet, was anger the only feeling on that terrible day a decade ago? Turns out it wasn't. Although anger was a definite part of the national response, there was also sadness, sympathy, bravery, fear, compassion, and a profound concern for our fellow Americans. Clemson University psychologist Cynthia L. S.
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A More Progressive Tax System Makes People Happier
The way some people talk, you’d think that a flat tax system—in which everyone pays at the same rate regardless of income—would make citizens feel better than more progressive taxation, where wealthier people are taxed at higher rates. Indeed, the U.S. has been diminishing progressivity of its tax structure for decades. But a new study comparing 54 nations found that flattening the tax risks flattening social wellbeing as well.
