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Your Child’s Fat, Mine’s Fine: Rose-Colored Glasses And The Obesity Epidemic
NPR: About 69 percent of American adults are overweight or obese, and more than four in five people say they are worried about obesity as a public health problem. But a recent poll conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health revealed a curious schism in our national attitudes toward obesity: Only one in five kids had a parent who feared the boy or girl would grow up to be overweight as an adult. Put another way, assuming current trends persist, parents of 80 percent of American children think all these kids will somehow end up being among the lucky 31 percent of adults who are not overweight.
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How Facebook Improves Memory
TIME: Checking status updates on Facebook may be just the distraction your memory needs. Facebook and other social media are generally considered distractions, rather than aids, to building memory. Interrupting whatever you’re doing to check your status or watch that cute cat video seems unlikely to help you retain the information you need, particularly for older people whose attention can be more fragmented. Read the whole story: TIME
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Marriage Research: Study Shows A 21-Minute Writing Task Can Improve Your Marriage
The Huffington Post: While millions of couples spend hours trying to learn how to improve their marriages through books or therapy, one recent study found that sustaining a happy marriage may only take 21 minutes, a pencil and a piece of paper. A Northwestern University study set to be published in "Psychological Science" later this year surveyed 120 married couples for two years about their relationship satisfaction, and asked them to describe their most significant recent arguments.
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Freshman Funk: Is Harmful Thinking Contagious?
I know very few people who would describe first semester, freshman year of college, as a time of unqualified joy. I was certainly ready to leave home, but even so it was a disruptive time. I was disconnected from my family and close friends for the first time and, even more difficult, thrown into a dormitory full of strangers—young men from unfamiliar places with diverse experiences and values. This social disruption was not an altogether bad thing in the long run. I knew nothing about anything when I arrived on campus, and these new classmates, including my roommate, opened my mind to all sorts of ideas I might not have encountered otherwise. The intellectual life was contagious.
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Selling Kids On Veggies When Rules Like ‘Clean Your Plate’ Fail
NPR: If you're a parent, you've probably heard remarks like this during dinner: "I don't like milk! My toast is burnt! I hate vegetables! I took a bite already! What's for dessert?" It can be daunting trying to ensure a healthy diet for our children. So it's no wonder parents often resort to dinner time rules. In our new poll, with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, 25 percent of families tell their children to eat everything on their plate, and 45 percent report setting restrictions on the types of foods eaten.
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Conservatives and liberals drink different beer
Salon: It was probably inevitable, but it’s striking nonetheless. In a new study published in the journal Psychological Science, Vishal Singh of New York University’s Stern School of Business and his colleagues apply an ever-growing body of research on the psychological traits of liberals and conservatives to their consumer choices. The result? A stark left-right difference when it comes to favoring well-established brands, like Coca-Cola or Tide, over the new and generic products that are trying to compete with them. Read the whole story: Salon
