How You Can Easily Become Mentally And Physically Stronger
part of many social groups. The support and activity makes you better able to deal with stress and to recover from physical challenges. From Science Daily: Being a part of many different social groups can improve mental health and help a person cope with stressful events. It also leads to better physical health, making you more able to withstand -- and recover faster from -- physical challenges, according to a study in the current Social Psychological and Personality Science. Belonging to…
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Is self-deception one of the keys to optimal performance?
..Overall, the results were consistent with the proposition that self-deception enhances motivation and performance during competition." Hat tip: Ray Pawulich: We investigated the relationship between self-deception and success in competition. Self-deception has been associated with stress reduction, a positive self-bias, and increased pain tolerance, all of which could enhance motivation and performance during competitive tasks. We selected athletic competition as a model and predicted that swimmers who successfully qualified for a national championship would engage in more self-deception than swimmers…
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Does fantasizing give you the motivation to achieve your goals?
pe. Fantasies sap the energy you need to achieve your goals: Positive fantasies allow people to mentally indulge in a desired future. Whereas previous research found that spontaneously generated positive fantasies about the future predict poor achievement, we examined the effect of experimentally induced positive fantasies about the future. The present four experiments identify low energy, measured by physiological and behavioral indicators, as a mechanism by which positive fantasies translate into poor achievement. Induced positive fantasies resulted in less energy…
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How much is more time with your friends worth?
ing able to spend more time with friends provides an increase in happiness worth up to an additional $133,000 a year. Meanwhile, actual pay raises have very little affect on happiness (Hat Tip: Penelope Trunk): 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…
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Is having more choices always a good thing?
. But we'll never admit it: We propose that individuals underestimate the costs of making choices relative to the benefits of finding the best option. Specifically, we demonstrate that research participants make systematic mistakes in predicting the effect of having more, vs. less, choice freedom on task performance and task-induced affect. Even when participants have the information to understand that the costs of choice freedom outweigh its benefits, they still predict that choice freedom will lead to better performance and…
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Here’s How You Can Significantly Reduce Job Stress
t a clear idea of what is expected of you: The aims of the present study were twofold: First, in differentiating between specific job characteristics, the authors examined the moderating influence of role clarity on the relationship between job demands and psychological and physical strain. Second, in providing a more comprehensive link between job demands and job performance, the authors examined strain as a mediator of that relationship. Participants were 1,418 Army cadets attending a 35-day assessment center. Survey data…
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Can stress really make you sick?
solutely. From APA: The results revealed a clear relationship between the amount of life stress reported and the percentage of people who caught the cold. As stress increased, so did the incidence of the cold, and this relationship was strongly linear, meaning that for each increment of additional stress, there is an additional increment of susceptibility to the cold. And: In a follow-up study, the result was replicated with an improved measure of cold infection. Cohen also obtained more information about…
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Should you go back to bed?
ve posted before on how little sleep you can get away with: ...by the end of two weeks, the six-hour sleepers were as impaired as those who, in another Dinges study, had been sleep-deprived for 24 hours straight — the cognitive equivalent of being legally drunk. The best part was, if you asked them, they felt fine and didn't realize they were impaired (the same way drunk people respond to such questions, minus the slurring.) Why else is it important?…
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