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Psychology’s First Superhero: Celebrating Wonder Woman At 75
Fast Company: William Moulton Marston—an attorney and psychologist who invented a systolic blood pressure deception test, the precursor to the modern polygraph—created Wonder Woman as a new type of superhero who, beyond her strength, used wisdom and compassion as weapons against evil—not to mention a magic golden lasso to compel people to tell the truth. Read the whole story: Fast Company
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‘Like’ it or not, teen brain is primed to join the crowd
The Washington Post: About the easiest action you can take in social media is to "like" a tweet or a photo. If you're a teenager, your brain is particularly primed to "like" what others have "liked," according to researchers from UCLA. Their new study, published in Psychological Science, is thought to be the first to replicate the social media experience while people are inside an fMRI scanner. The findings underscore the importance of both reward-seeking behavior and peer acceptance in adolescence. Thirty-four adolescents, ages 13-18, roughly equal numbers male and female, participated in the experiment.
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Money can buy happiness — if you know how to use it
The Washington Post: As humans, we are almost always aspiring to land the next promotion or the next big raise, or to strike it rich some other way. But a new report offers hope for those of us who have yet to win the lottery. Researchers at the University of Cambridge concluded in a study released this month that money can indeed buy happiness. But the secret, they found, is not how much cash you have. It’s what you do with the money you have. ...
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The Benefits of Spicing Up a Breast-Feeding Mother’s Diet
The New York Times: When I had my children I felt that there was a tendency by experts, including those in my own pediatric profession, to push certain principles that took all the fun out of life. This played out for me, in particular, after I gave birth to my first child, and was told as part of my breast-feeding “support” that I should avoid all spicy foods, because they would upset the baby.
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How to Beat Writer’s Block
The New Yorker: In 1920, a sixteen-year-old Graham Greene decided that, after “104 weeks of monotony, humiliation, and mental pain,” he could no longer remain at Berkhamsted, the prep school where he was enrolled. He fled, leaving behind a note of resignation for his parents—his father was the school’s headmaster—, and was discovered on the heath soon after. The escape proved so troubling to his family that it led to a six-month stint in psychotherapy. It was a fortuitous turn in Greene’s life.
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Why Keeping a Travel Journal Is More Valuable Than Any Photo
Condé Nast: Perhaps you’ve toured the Vatican Museum and visited the Sistine Chapel. You have a hastily snapped photo of the ceiling, of course—no better than a print in an art history book, but nonetheless proof you’ve been there. But do you really remember how it actually made you feel: the awe of staring up at the 500-year-old frescoes? Doubtful. In 2014, a study published in Psychological Science tested the note-taking efficacy of two groups of university students: one that took lecture notes on laptops, while a second recorded notes by hand.
