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A Cognitive Earthquake: Who’s Really In Need?
In January 2000, an earthquake shook China’s mountainous Yunnan province. It was a moderate earthquake and killed only seven, but it leveled more than 40,000 homes and injured thousands of residents. According to the World Health Organization, as many as 1.8 million were affected by the disaster, and in need of shelter, medical attention or other aid. A couple years later, an earthquake hit the Iranian city of Bam, a tourist center once famous as a Silk Road trading post. This disaster took the lives of almost 27,000 and affected another 270,000. Every natural disaster, whatever the WHO tallies, is tragic for somebody, and the world’s citizens always respond in humanitarian ways.
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Can Tylenol Dissolve Feelings of Dread?
TIME: Thinking about death, fearing the unknown and worrying about the future aren’t traditionally considered sources of physical pain, but they may be susceptible to the same pain-killing treatments. So Daniel Randles, a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia and his colleagues decided to see if the interaction ran deeper. Perhaps, they thought, the pain-processing region in the brain reacts to many types of unexpected, potentially negative events. After all, both pain and social rejection involve unpredictable and distressing events that could lead to behavioral changes to avoid those situations in the future. Uncertainty also tends to increase both types of pain.
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Encountering Connections May Make Life Feel More Meaningful
Experiencing connections, regularities, and coherence in their environment may lead people to feel a greater sense of meaning in life, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research, conducted by graduate student Samantha Heintzelman of the University of Missouri, along with advisor Laura King and fellow graduate student Jason Trent, suggests that meaning in life has an important adaptive function, connecting people to the world that surrounds them and, thereby, boosting their chances of survival. “Meaning in life tells the individual when the world is making sense,” say Heintzelman and colleagues.
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Shhh, The Kids Can Hear You Arguing (Even When They’re Asleep)
NPR: For years now, psychologists have been telling couples who yell at one another to stop for the sake of the kids. Such conflict in the home — even when no violence is involved — is associated with a host of negative behavioral and life outcomes for children. Some strands of research have gone so far as to suggest that dissolving a marriage might be better for kids than exposing them to high levels of conflict within a bad marriage. Still, the effects of parental conflict do not appear to be experienced equally by all children. Some kids do badly when exposed to conflict; others seem to cope much better.
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Is Retail Therapy for Real? 5 Ways Shopping Is Actually Good for You
TIME: You know the phrase, “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping”? There just may be some wisdom in that. A survey conducted by TNS Global on behalf of Ebates.com found that more than half of Americans (52%, including 64% of women and 40% of men) admit to engaging in “retail therapy”—the act of shopping and spending to improve one’s mood. This echoes a previous study, published in the Journal of Psychology and Marketing, that revealed 62% of shoppers had purchased something to cheer themselves up, and another 28% had purchased as a form of celebration. But beyond the quick rush provided by making a purchase, is “retail therapy” actually therapeutic?
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American Voices: Dan Ariely
PBS: For many people, saving money isn’t just difficult; it’s a foreign concept. A recent study found that 58% of Americans do not have a formal retirement plan in place.¹ Why is even thinking about saving money so daunting to so many of us? We spoke with Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He says that many people have difficulty saving their income because our minds and our environments are not naturally suited to thinking about money in the long term. In fact, our minds are not very good at thinking about the concept of money at all.
