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Choosing Sadness: The Irony of Depression
I knew a man some years ago who suffered from serious and chronic depression. He also lived what seemed to me a melancholy life, listening to sad, sentimental music, reading dreary existential novels, and rarely venturing out of his dark and gloomy house. I cared for this man, and I was perplexed by this. I knew that he suffered from a debilitating disease, but he also didn’t seem to be taking simple steps that might lift his mood. It was almost like he was choosing sadness. This seems like an ungenerous thought, I know, but it turns out there may be some truth to it.
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Psychopath. Successful Psychopath.
The Huffington Post: Forest "Tommy" Yeo-Thomas was a real-life swashbuckler, charismatic and daring. The British World War II spy, known as the "White Rabbit" to the Nazis, employed an array of disguises and fake documents to elude the enemy in Vichy France, once pretending to be a corpse while traveling in a coffin. He withstood severe torture by the Gestapo, leapt from a moving train, and strangled a prison guard with his bare hands. He was also known as a seducer of beautiful women. Most people have never heard of Yeo-Thomas, though most are familiar with his fictional incarnation. He was the inspiration for novelist Ian Fleming's flamboyant hero Bond. James Bond.
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Why income inequality is so much worse than we realize
Scientific American: In a candid conversation with Frank Rich last fall, Chris Rock said, “Oh, people don’t even know. If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets.” The findings of three studies, published over the last several years in Perspectives on Psychological Science, suggest that Rock is right. We have no idea how unequal our society has become. In their 2011 paper, Michael Norton and Dan Ariely analyzed beliefs about wealth inequality. They asked more than 5,000 Americans to guess the percentage of wealth (i.e., savings, property, stocks, etc., minus debts) owned by each fifth of the population.
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Procrastination Is Not Great for Your Heart
New York Magazine: People who are self-admitted procrastinators are also more likely to have heart disease, according to a study published online this week in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine.Fuschia M. Sirois of Bishop's University in Quebec, who led the research, gave a group of people with hypertension and cardiovascular disease and a group of healthy people a variety of questionnaires, including one designed to measure their proclivity toward putting things off.
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This Fast-Food-Loving, Organics-Hating Ivy League Prof Will Trick You Into Eating Better
Mother Jones: THE CHICKEN QUESADILLA GRANDE is calling to me. I am jet-lagged, starving, and fairly certain that a giant pile of melted cheese will dramatically improve my outlook on life. But right now, in front of a renowned authority on healthy eating? That doesn't seem like such a great idea. I'm here at an Applebee's in Ithaca, New York, where Brian Wansink, a Cornell food psychologist, is evaluating my dining habits. So far, he says, I've got a few things going for me: We are seated by the window, which his research has shown makes us 80 percent more likely to order salad. And had we chosen a booth near the bar, our risk of ordering dessert would have been 73 percent greater.
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This Is The Real Consequence Of Feeling Lonely
Refinery 29: Bad news for the lone wolves out there: New research suggests that, even if you love being alone, being lonely isn't all that great for your health. The study, published this month in Perspectives on Psychological Science, was a meta-analysis of previously-published studies looking at the relationship between social isolation and health. The researchers found 70 studies that qualified — with 3,407,134 participants overall. On average, the studies followed participants for about seven years while monitoring their levels of social isolation and loneliness as well as whether or not they had died. Read the whole story: Refinery 29
