Why do bad moods increase self-defeating behavior?
d moods sap your willpower which leads to greater risk-taking: Increased risk taking may explain the link between bad moods and self-defeating behavior. In Study 1, personal recollections of self-defeating actions implicated bad moods and resultant risky decisions. In Study 2, embarrassment increased the preference for a long-shot (high-risk, high-payoff) lottery over a low-risk, low-payoff one. Anger had a similar effect in Study 3. Study 4 replicated this and showed that the effect could be eliminated by making participants analyze…
1 min read
These Types Of People End Up More Successful And Make More Money
lf-discipline is a better predictor of success than IQ. Happiness translates into success and happier people are more successful. Just don't be too happy. Gay men have 12 percent lower personal incomes and lesbians have 15 percent higher personal incomes than heterosexual men and women. Nice guys make less money, rude people have higher credit scores and being ethical can hurt your income. Taller people make more money and it's because they're smarter. Thin women make more money. Weight has…
2 minutes
12 Ways To Easily Eliminate Stress
cording to one study, the stress management technique that worked best was deliberately planning your day so that stress is minimized. The trick to not worrying about work stuff while at home is to make specific plans to address concerns before you leave the office. The difference between a fun challenge and stressful work is often just a feeling of control. The best way to reduce job stress is to get a clear idea of what is expected of you.…
2 minutes
Humor Can Improve Your Life: 5 Secrets Backed By Research
mor is our brain's way of rewarding us for correcting errors in our thinking. It improves our mood because it takes brainpower to decode the joke and having to think kills bad feelings. Humor can make you more persuasive because humor mentally disarms people. Women find funny guys attractive because a sense of humor = intelligence. In fact, you can predict how many women a man has slept with by how funny he is. Reliving moments that made the two…
1 min read
The Simple Secret To Happiness Most People Get Wrong, Backed By Research
cus on increasing the amount of good stuff in your life vs. reducing the amount of bad stuff. Studies show that it really is the little things in life that make us happy. Researchers often tout the happiness-increasing powers of both religion and exercise. One of the lesser known reasons why they're so effective is because both provide regular, frequent boosts. You may be focused on a big goal, something that you're sure will make you super-happy for a long…
2 minutes
To increase willpower should you focus on greater self-control or greater self-compassion?
lf-compassion. Via The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It: Study after study shows that self-criticism is consistently associated with less motivation and worse self-control. It is also one of the single biggest predictors of depression, which drains both “I will” power and “I want” power. In contrast, self-compassion— being supportive and kind to yourself, especially in the face of stress and failure— is associated with more motivation and…
2 minutes
Does the guilt really make guilty pleasures taste better?
s. Via Kellogg: ...participants who had been primed for guilt both liked the candy more and said they would be willing to pay more for it than those primed with neutral words. Guilt also made the initial pleasurable reaction last longer—the guilt-primed participants remembered liking the candies more than neutral-primed participants. And: Neither Goldsmith nor her colleagues were surprised by the consistency of these results. “Guilt is linked with pleasure because often times when we experience guilt, we experience pleasure,”…
1 min read
You Become The Fictional Characters You Watch
a Science Daily: Researchers at Ohio State University examined what happened to people who, while reading a fictional story, found themselves feeling the emotions, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses of one of the characters as if they were their own -- a phenomenon the researchers call "experience-taking." They found that, in the right situations, experience-taking may lead to real changes, if only temporary, in the lives of readers. In one experiment, for example, the researchers found that people who strongly…
1 min read
