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Do You Really Need Closure?
Getting ghosted. Being fired. Losing a parent. When difficult things happen, our first instinct is often to seek answers. Why did this happen? How could this be? What will it take to feel better again? In short, we seek closure — and the more satisfying it is, the better. Experts say that closure may help some people heal. A resolution can make it easier to “transcend that particular event and move on to other things,” said Arie W. Kruglanski, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland. But is closure always necessary? And is it always possible? Dr. Kruglanski and other experts say the concept can be both useful and detrimental. ...
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The Dieting Myth That Just Won’t Die
... The theory is also inherently appealing, in that most people don’t like avoiding tasty food; they can easily believe that doing so would be harmful. No wonder, then, that the idea spread far among clinicians and everyday Americans. Social media supercharged the theory, enough that many people now believe that placing any limits on your diet could be dangerous or harmful, Ashley Gearhardt, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, told me.
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How the 2008 Recession Shifted Class Identity
A new study explores how the economic and social class of Americans changed after the Great Recession.
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Is The Key To Better Aging All In Our Mind?
Cheese and wine aren’t the only things that get better with age: many older adults also show significant improvements in their physical and cognitive health over time, according to a new study. The reason why seems to lie in how they think about aging. “Our findings suggest there is often a reserve capacity for improvement in later life,” said study co-author Becca Levy, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at Yale University, in a statement. “And because age beliefs are modifiable, this opens the door to interventions at both the individual and societal level.”
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Can Dreams Help You Solve Problems?
... As well, in recent years, researchers have found ways to influence dreams by communicating with people while they are in a lucid state. In 2021, Ken Paller and Karen Konkoly of Northwestern University and their colleagues reported that they had established two-way communication with lucid dreamers, tapping their hands in a specific pattern and having them signal back with eye movements. The sleeping subjects received math questions and dreamed about the solutions, relaying them to the experimenter. This work opened the door to someday, perhaps, asking people in real time what they are dreaming about.
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Can’t Stop Overthinking?
Overthinking might not strike you as a strenuous activity. You don’t have to move a muscle to spend hours imagining worst-case scenarios, debating choices or playing the day’s headlines on a loop. And yet, running mental laps can feel almost as exhausting as real ones. ... Thinking itself isn’t the problem. Ethan Kross, psychologist, researcher and author of “Chatter,” said that our inner voice can be a really valuable tool. It allows us to reflect, plan, rehearse important conversations, motivate ourselves toward goals and make sense of what happens to us, among other things.
