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
Do you need a “to-do” list or a “not-to-do” list?
m Collins, author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't, makes an interesting suggestion -- you may need to worry less about your to-do list and focus on a "stop doing" list: Rochelle's lesson came back to me a number of years later while puzzling over the research data on 11 companies that turned themselves from mediocrity to excellence, from good to great. In cataloguing the key steps that ignited the transformations, my research…
2 minutes
Top Five Regrets Of The Dying — And How To Avoid Them
ving with regret scares us all. Bronnie Ware worked in palliative care for many years, tending to people during the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. A handful of themes cropped up in the things they regretted during their final days: Via The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: 1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. 2. I wish I didn't work so hard. 3.…
1 min read
Have we got it all wrong about what it takes to live a long life?
J Ideas Market points to an interesting interview over at APA with Howard Friedman, author of The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study. Here are some highlights: On stress: There is a terrible misunderstanding about stress. Chronic physiological disturbance is not at all the same thing as hard work, social challenges or demanding careers. People are being given rotten advice to slow down, take it easy, stop worrying and retire to Florida.…
2 minutes
Sex Might Improve Your Ability To Deal With Stress
ybe: Penile-vaginal intercourse (PVI) but not other sexual behavior is associated with better psychological and physiological function. I examined the relationship of sexual behavior patterns to blood pressure (BP) and its reactivity to stress (public speaking and verbal arithmetic). For a fortnight, 24 women and 22 men used daily diaries to record PVI, masturbation, and partnered sexual behavior in the absence of PVI. Persons who reported PVI (but no other sexual activities) had better stress response (less reactivity and/or lower…
1 min read
