This Is What Your Relationships Are Worth In Dollars:
ving a better social life can be worth as much as an additional $131,232 a year in terms of life satisfaction: There is substantial evidence in the psychology and sociology literature that social relationships promote happiness for the individual. Yet the size of their impacts remains largely unknown. This paper explores the use of shadow pricing method to estimate the monetary values of the satisfaction with life gained by an increase in the frequency of interaction with friends, relatives, and…
3 minutes
Why do grandmom’s cookies taste better than anyone else’s?
tentions change how we experience things. Kindness does soothe pain and increase pleasure. Via Eurekalert: A nurse's tender loving care really does ease the pain of a medical procedure, and grandma's cookies really do taste better, if we perceive them to be made with love - suggests newly published research by a University of Maryland psychologist. The findings have many real-world applications, including in medicine, relationships, parenting and business. "The way we read another persons intentions changes our physical experience…
1 min read
What’s the best thing to have after a heart attack?
happy marriage. Married people were 2.5 times more likely to be alive 15 years after a coronary bypass. Happily married people were 3.2 times as likely to still be around: Objective: To examine the effects of marital status and marital satisfaction on survival after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Methods: Participants were 225 people who had CABG between 1987 and 1990. Marital status at the time of surgery and marital satisfaction 1 year after surgery were used to predict…
2 minutes
5 ways to make your naps blissful and awesome:
a Boston Globe: If you're a morning person, the best time to nap is around 1 or 1:30PM. If you're a night owl, nap later, around 2:30 or 3PM. The best naps are under 45 mins or 90-120 mins. Anything in between is likely to give you that groggy feeling. Naps don't mean you're lazy: A NASA study showed that in-flight naps improved subsequent performance by 34% and overall alertness by 54%. To make sure you're productive after your nap…
1 min read
What personality trait should you seek in a spouse?
nscientiousness was the trait most associated with long, happy marriages: In this study of 125 heterosexual long-wed couples, we examined both spouses' personality traits and relative differences in partner perceptions of personality as predictors of marital satisfaction, simultaneously for both husbands and wives. As hypothesized, each of the Big Five personality traits emerged as significantly associated with marital satisfaction though significant between-trait and between-sex differences were observed. Most notably, trait levels predicted marital satisfaction less consistently than positive reporting discrepancies…
1 min read
Do we work too hard to avoid regret?
anticipate regret will be much more painful than it actually is. Studies show we consistently overestimate how regret affects us: Decisions are powerfully affected by anticipated regret, and people anticipate feeling more regret when they lose by a narrow margin than when they lose by a wide margin. But research suggests that people are remarkably good at avoiding self-blame, and hence they may be better at avoiding regret than they realize. Four studies measured people’s anticipations and experiences of…
2 minutes
This is why older people are happier
ientists aren't 100% sure but they have discovered a few things that might be responsible: Via Science Daily: Researchers, including the authors, have found that older people shown pictures of faces or situations tend to focus on and remember the happier ones more and the negative ones less. Other studies have discovered that as people age, they seek out situations that will lift their moods -- for instance, pruning social circles of friends or acquaintances who might bring them down.…
1 min read
How can you stop worrying about that stuff you still need to finish?
st making a plan of how you will complete it later can reduce anxiety and intrusive thoughts: Unfulfilled goals persist in the mind, as asserted by ample theory and evidence (e.g., the Zeigarnik effect). The standard assumption has been that such cognitive activation persists until the goal is fulfilled. However, we predicted that contributing to goal pursuit through plan making could satisfy the various cognitive processes that usually promote goal pursuit. In several studies, we activated unfulfilled goals and demonstrated…
2 minutes
