Do many small pleasures beat fewer larger ones?
om another great research review by Psyblog: Here's a perplexing study. Nelson & Meyvis (2008) had participants massaged for 3 minutes. However one group had a 20 second break in the middle while the others had a continuous massage. Who enjoyed it more? People predicted it would be the continuous massage, but they were wrong. People enjoyed the massage with the break more because the break stopped them becoming acclimatised to the massage. The enemy of happiness is adaptation. Unfortunately we get used…
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Are ethical people happier?
om Miller-McCune: “The just man is happy, and the unjust man is miserable,” Plato declares in The Republic. A noble thought, to be sure, but Socrates’ most famous student didn’t have data to back up his belief. Harvey James, on the other hand, does. The University of Missouri economist finds a relationship between life satisfaction and low tolerance for unethical conduct. And: “What I found is, generally, people who believe that these particular ethical scenarios are not acceptable also tend to indicate…
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Rude People Have Higher Credit Scores
ople who rate low on agreeableness have higher credit scores. From Science Daily: "With regards to personality and credit -- it makes sense that conscientiousness is related to good credit, but what was really interesting was that agreeableness was negatively related to your credit score," said Jeremy Bernerth, assistant professor in LSU's E. J. Ourso College of Business Rucks Department of Management. "That suggests easy-going individuals actually have worse credit scores than disagreeable and rude individuals. This suggests that agreeable…
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Comedy Is Good For You
om the Washington Post: There is a growing body of research indicating that a good guffaw may improve immune function, help lower blood pressure, boost mood and reduce stress and depression. And despite a dearth of more rigorous, long-term studies, the sum of these findings is compelling, says cardiologist Michael Miller, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who has researched the topic. “We don’t have any clinical outcome evidence to show that laughter will reduce heart attacks or improve overall survival. However, we do…
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3 Ways Bubble Gum Can Dramatically Improve Your Life
Yes, gum can make you smarter: Recent reports suggest that enhancement of memory performance while chewing gum is a fairly robust phenomenon. The processes underlying the effect are not known, but may involve glucose delivery, context-dependent effects and arousal mechanisms amongst others.This brief commentary outlines the main findings from these studies and raises some issues regarding interpretation, methodology and future research directions. Source: "Chewing gum and cognitive performance: a case of a functional food with function but no food?" from Appetite 43 (2004)…
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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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How can you free yourself from an angry or depressed mood?
t your brain busy with working on a hard problem. Studies show that when your brain is loaded up and distracted by a complex problem it can do wonders to alleviate a foul mood. From In Mind: ...recent experimental findings have demonstrated that performing a cognitive task can take the edge of negative emotional responses and help people put things into a more neutral perspective ( Morrow & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1990; Van Dillen & Koole, 2007). Thus, even when people successfully pass the…
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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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