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You Are What You Eat
The Economist: Many psychological studies conducted over the past two decades suggest Westerners have a more individualistic, analytic and abstract mental life than do East Asians. Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain this. One, that modernisation promotes individualism, falls at the first hurdle: Japan, an ultra-modern country whose people have retained a collective outlook. A second, that a higher prevalence of infectious disease in a place makes contact with strangers more dangerous, and causes groups to turn inward, is hardly better. Europe has had its share of plagues; probably more that either Japan or Korea.
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Get It Over With: People Choose More Difficult Tasks to Get Jobs Done More Quickly
Most of us are well-acquainted with procrastination, but new research suggests that “pre-crastination”—hurrying to complete a task as soon as possible—may also be a common phenomenon.
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Lousy Weather May Fuel Work Performance
Wet, gray days are likely to leave you feeling dampened in spirit and low on energy. But, those ugly days may actually enhance the quality and volume of your work.
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What a Great Trip! And I’m Not Even There Yet
The New York Times: Wish you were on vacation right now? Don’t. Taking a vacation won’t necessarily make you happier. But anticipating it will. I first explored this idea while reporting an article about happiness in 2010, the same year that a psychological study about the connection between anticipation and happiness was published online in a journal called Applied Research in Quality of Life. The authors of the study, researchers from the Netherlands, interviewed more than 1,500 people, including 974 vacationers, and found that the vacationers felt most happy before their trips. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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Can Stress Really Make Us Sick?
The Washington Post: It seems like a no-brainer that stress may make us more likely to succumb to viruses and other infections, but that’s a tough connection to make scientifically. For starters, it would not be ethical to test the idea by putting people under extreme stress and exposing them to dangerous infections in the laboratory. But some scientists have nonetheless found ways to study the problem. Their findings show that the picture is more complicated than the notion that too much stress can overwhelm the immune system. Read the whole story: The Washington Post
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Forgiving a Wrong May Actually Make It Easier to Forget
We’re often told to “forgive and forget” the wrongs that we suffer -- it turns out that there may be some scientific truth behind the common saying. A study from researchers at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland shows that the details of a transgression are more susceptible to forgetting when that transgression has been forgiven. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “It is well established that learning to forgive others can have positive benefits for an individual’s physical and mental health,” says Saima Noreen, lead author of the study.
