Is deliberately screwing up the best way to learn?
ing guided into mistakes during training led to greater confidence and overall better learning than being taught to prevent errors. Via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work: In one experiment where 90 people went through a software training program, half were taught to prevent errors from occurring, while the other half were guided into mistakes during training. And lo and behold, the group encouraged to make errors not only exhibited…
1 min read
Can drinking more beer help you achieve your goals?
ybe. A new study shows that alcohol makes us focus on a goal's desirability instead of its feasiblity. Basically, that means we think more about what we want and less about how realistic our chances of getting it are. If you've ever had one too many and done something stupid, you're probably nodding right now. Peer Reviewed By My Neurons offers an interesting perspective on how, for some, this could be part of a strategy for goal achievement: In other…
1 min read
Divorce Is Contagious
vorce is the dissolution of a social tie, but it is also possible that attitudes about divorce flow across social ties. To explore how social networks influence divorce and vice versa, we utilize a longitudinal data set from the long-running Framingham Heart Study. We find that divorce can spread between friends, siblings, and coworkers, and there are clusters of divorcees that extend two degrees of separation in the network. We also find that popular people are less likely to get…
1 min read
Does doodling actually increase your ability to pay attention?
ve posted before about the positives and negatives of daydreaming. Looks like doodling may increase your ability to pay attention when your mind is tempted to wander: Via The Science of Sin: The Psychology of the Seven Deadlies (and Why They Are So Good For You): Now, we know that mind-wandering can hamper memory performance on such tests. Does doodling offer some protection against this? The results of Andrade’s study: doodlers recalled 29 percent more information than nondoodlers did. Precisely…
1 min read
Are people nicer where the pace of life is slower?
s. Via The Science of Sin: The Psychology of the Seven Deadlies (and Why They Are So Good For You): In 2008, with Stephen Reysen and Ellen Ganz, both also at California State University at the time, Levine asked: does the pace of life in cities have any effect on helping behavior? Here’s what these researchers did to answer this question. First, they measured the pace of life in twenty-four US cities. These cities were sampled from the stereotypically torpid…
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What can you tell about someone’s personality just by their clothes and surroundings?
mon Laham summarizes some of the fascinating research of Sam Gosling in The Science of Sin: He can tell you that people with inspirational posters on their walls are neurotic, that people who swing their arms when they walk are extroverted, and that those with uncluttered offices are conscientious. On the sartorial front there are the following encryptions: dark clothes = neurotic; formal dress = conscientious; messy and unconventional clothing = open to new things; cleavage and expensive clothes =…
1 min read
Is there an upside to attention deficit disorder?
makes you more creative. Via Imagine: How Creativity Works: Surprisingly, those students diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) got significantly higher scores. White then measured levels of creative achievement in the real world, asking the students if they’d ever won prizes at juried art shows or been honored at science fairs. In every single domain, from drama to engineering, the students with ADHD had achieved more. Their attention deficit turned out to be a creative blessing. Join over…
1 min read
What does Facebook know about your relationships?
cebook crunches the numbers and comes up with some interesting info on when people get together and when they split up: The days around Valentine's Day and Christmas are good chances to try your luck or breathe a bit easier. The data showed far more people paired up around these times than joined the ranks of the newly single. And: Across age groups, the summer months are bad news for relationships. In 2010 and 2011, May through August were clearly…
1 min read
