Do pregnant women who drink alcohol have smarter and healthier kids?
rst off, nobody disputes that moderate, heavy and binge drinking during pregnancy can have serious negative consequences on a fetus. That said... Via Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies?: The Surprising Science of Pregnancy: Some studies, usually European in origin, lift the spirits. There's no apparent reason to avoid light drinking, according to one at the University of London of nearly 12,500 mothers and their three-year-old children. Reading the results, I contemplate swapping my wheatgrass for a tequila shot. It…
1 min read
Too Much Happiness Can Be A Very Bad Thing
a The Washington Post, highlights by the always-thought-provoking Mr. Robin Hanson: Very high levels of positive feelings predict risk-taking behaviors, excess alcohol and drug consumption, binge eating, and may lead us to neglect threats. Those who early in their lives reported the highest life satisfaction (for example, judging it at 5 on a 5-point scale) years later reported lower income than those who felt slightly less merry when young. What’s more, they dropped out of school earlier. A group of…
1 min read
This is what is most responsible for your happiness
's the little things. Very happy people don't experience more happy events than less happy people. It's more about perspective and how depression-prone you are -- and getting enough sleep helps too. Via 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior: Ed Diener and Martin Seligman screened over 200 undergraduates for levels of happiness, and compared the upper 10% (the “extremely happy”) with the middle and bottom 10%. Extremely happy students experienced no greater number of…
1 min read
Quick little things you can do to increase long term happiness
rvard happiness expert and author of "The Happiness Advantage", Shawn Achor gives some science based tips for increasing well-being. Via CNN: In The Happiness Advantage, I challenge readers to do one brief positive exercise every day for 21 days. Only through behavioral change can information become transformation. • Write down three new things you are grateful for each day; • Write for two minutes a day describing one positive experience you had over the past 24 hours; • Exercise for…
1 min read
Can alcohol be good for your brain?
derate drinkers are 26 percent less likely to develop dementia when they get old. Might be due to the alcohol or to drinkers being more social in general. Via Brain Candy: Science, Paradoxes, Puzzles, Logic, and Illogic to Nourish Your Neurons: An Australian study of more than ten thousand people found that moderate drinkers are about 26 percent less likely than abstainers to develop dementia in later life. The difference may be due to biology (alcohol’s anti-inflammatory properties) or psychology:…
1 min read
How much does your relationship with your boss matter? Can it kill you?
a The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work: Studies have found that the strength of the bond between manager and employee is the prime predictor of both daily productivity and the length of time people stay at their jobs. Gallup, which has spent decades studying the practices of the world’s leading organizations, estimates that U.S. companies lose $360 billion each year due to lost productivity from employees who have poor relationships…
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What do we do with our leisure time: what truly makes us happy or what’s easy?
do what's easy. Via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work: Studies have found that American teenagers are two and half times more likely to experience elevated enjoyment when engaged in a hobby than when watching TV, and three times more likely when playing a sport. And yet here’s the paradox: These same teenagers spend four times as many hours watching TV as they do engaging in sports or hobbies.…
1 min read
Does success make us happy or does happiness make us successful?
ppiness makes us successful. Via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work: These best and brightest willingly sacrificed happiness for success because, like so many of us, they had been taught that if you work hard you will be successful—and only then, once you are successful, will you be happy. They had been taught that happiness is the reward you get only when you become partner of an investment firm, win…
1 min read
