Here’s Where “Fake It Until You Make It” Works
en it comes to confidence and social situations, "fake it until you make it" can help. Appearing depressed can create a downward spiral. Avoiding eye contact can increase isolation: Via Medical News Today: ...avoiding eye contact may actually increase depression amongst already unhappy individuals, as it can lead to isolation. "Sad people avoiding eye contact will disrupt normal social fluency and may lead to them shunning certain social situations," said Dr Hills. "Although this may reduce anxiety caused by the…
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How can you increase your sense of meaning in life?
more nostalgic: The present research tested the proposition that nostalgia serves an existential function by bolstering a sense of meaning in life. Study 1 found that nostalgia was positively associated with a sense of meaning in life. Study 2 experimentally demonstrated that nostalgia increases a sense of meaning in life. In both studies, the link between nostalgia and increased meaning in life was mediated by feelings of social connectedness. Study 3 evidenced that threatened meaning increases nostalgia. Study 4…
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TGIF! Is Friday really that great? Is Monday really that awful?
..on average, people's mood remained about the same throughout the week." Via PsyBlog: They found that, on average, people's mood remained about the same throughout the week. Mondays weren't as depressing as people thought and Fridays and Saturdays weren't as exciting as people predicted. The results demonstrate the memory bias: when thinking back we tend to recall the worst incidence of an event we've experienced before. Mondays are stereotypically depressing, so we tend to recall the worst Mondays. Fridays and…
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Can a boring job give you a heart attack?
notony on the job is associated with greater risk of myocardial infarction: The project was designed to test the assumption that certain psychosocial characteristics of occupational groups are associated with elevated myocardial infarction risk. All cases of myocardial infarction below the age of 65 in men living in the region of greater Stockholm during the years 1974-1976 were identified (deaths as well as survivals) in the official registries of hospitalizations and deaths. For each case two controls without infarction (in…
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What are the happiest jobs? What are the unhappiest?
a Forbes: 1. Clergy: The least worldly are reported to be the happiest of all 2. Firefighters: Eighty percent of firefighters are “very satisfied” with their jobs, which involve helping people. 3. Physical therapists: Social interaction and helping people apparently make this job one of the happiest. 4. Authors: For most authors, the pay is ridiculously low or non-existent, but the autonomy of writing down the contents of your own mind apparently leads to happiness. 5. Special education teachers: If…
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What drink might reduce depression in women?
ffee. Via Inforum: Among a large population of women tracked for as long as 18 years each, the women who routinely consumed the highest levels of caffeine were 20 percent less likely than those who drank little to none to become depressed when they were nearing or in their 60s. Coffee, which ounce-for-ounce delivers the strongest dose of caffeine, was most women's pick-me-up of choice. And generally, the more caffeine a woman drank, the more likely she was to be…
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Why are lawyers so unhappy? (And how can we use this to be happier?)
rtin Seligman, psychology professor at UPenn and author of Authentic Happiness, clues us in as to just how unhappy lawyers are: Researchers at John Hopkins University found statistically significant elevations of major depressive disorder in only 3 of 104 occupations surveyed. When adjusted for sociodemographics, lawyers topped the list, suffering from depression at a rate of 3.6 times higher than employed persons generally. Lawyers also suffer from alcoholism and illegal drug use at rates far higher than non-lawyers. The divorce…
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Does Facebook make us miserable?
Facebook we all show the best and not the worst, leading to portraits of unattainable lives that may very well make us feel bad by comparison: Via Slate: Led by Alex Jordan, who at the time was a Ph.D. student in Stanford's psychology department, the researchers found that their subjects consistently underestimated how dejected others were–and likely wound up feeling more dejected as a result. Jordan got the idea for the inquiry after observing his friends' reactions to Facebook:…
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