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How to Harness Your Anxiety
Anxiety has long been one of the most feared enemies in our emotional canon. We fear its arrival, feel helpless and trapped under its spell, and grant it power to overtake us in new, exciting and challenging situations. But what if we’ve been going about it all wrong? Research shows that anxiety can actually be a pathway to our best selves. A range of new neuroscience, along with ideas from ancient philosophy, Charles Darwin, early social scientists and positive psychology, have all pointed in this direction. To be sure, severe anxiety can be debilitating. But for many people who experience it at more moderate levels it can be helpful, if we are open enough to embrace and reframe it.
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Science confirms what the heart already knows: Hugs really do make you feel better
Feeling down in the dumps? Stressed? A little off-kilter because of some disagreement? Hug it out! A new study suggests that just reaching out and touching someone -- consensually, of course -- can reduce bad feelings associated with the typical ups and downs of our social interactions. The study from the Department of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, published this week in PLOS ONE, looked at the social interactions of more than 400 people over two weeks. A summary of their daily activities, moods and physical interactions revealed a causal link between emotional states, conflicts and the number of hugs a person gave or received.
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Can brain-stimulating implants treat some severe cases of autism?
It’s 7 p.m. on a Friday and Rebecca "Becky" Audette is already in bed, tucked under a polka-dotted lavender comforter. Dark purple velour curtains with butterfly ties hang over the lavender walls of her bedroom. Purple has been Becky’s favorite color since she was a toddler, before she was diagnosed with autism at age 7. Now, the young woman functions at about the level of a 4-year-old. “Am I going to bed? I want to go to bed,” she insists. Becky lives with her mother, Pamela Peirce; brother, Jason Audette; and Jason’s wife in a gray-and-white colonial-style house that was Peirce’s childhood home in Rehoboth, Massachusetts.
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Visualizing Specific Impacts of Climate Change Could Change Behavior
Many people view climate change as a distant, abstract threat. But having them imagine the tangible consequences of resulting droughts or floods may help shift this perception and encourage proenvironmental behavior, a new study suggests. Researchers asked 93 college students in Taiwan to read a report on temperature anomalies, floods and other climate change-related events that have affected the island. The scientists then asked 62 of the participants to write down three ways in which such phenomena might impact their future lives. Half the people in that group were instructed to imagine such scenarios in detail, including specific individuals and settings.
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To Prevent Loneliness, Start in the Classroom
Starting in September of 2020, schoolchildren across the United Kingdom will learn from their teachers how to fend off loneliness. In January, British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed the first “minister of loneliness.” This week, her administration released an 84-page plan detailing the actions it will take to curb loneliness across the country, including measures that will be enacted in schools. Starting in primary school, students will have mandatory lessons in “relationships education,” and such lessons will also be incorporated into sex-ed classes in high school.
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Altruists Make More Money and Have More Kids
Altruistic people tend to score higher on many measures of life satisfaction. Yes, that seems counterintuitive, and such scales can admittedly be subjective. So a research team decided to explore the relationship between selflessness and two outcomes we are evolutionarily programmed to desire: wealth and procreation. It reports generous people have more children than selfish ones. What's more, as a rule, they also earn more money. It further finds "people generally expect selfish individuals to have higher incomes," an unsupported belief that can inspire bad behavior.
