Why do grandmom’s cookies taste better than anyone else’s?
tentions change how we experience things. Kindness does soothe pain and increase pleasure. Via Eurekalert: A nurse's tender loving care really does ease the pain of a medical procedure, and grandma's cookies really do taste better, if we perceive them to be made with love - suggests newly published research by a University of Maryland psychologist. The findings have many real-world applications, including in medicine, relationships, parenting and business. "The way we read another persons intentions changes our physical experience…
1 min read
Are there easy ways to improve your next vacation?
ristian Jarrett has a long interesting piece on vacations in The Psychologist. There are a number of interesting highlights, including the optimal length of a trip: ...people on mid-length holidays of between three to six days tended to report more positive mood than those on shorter or longer trips. ‘Possibly a two- to six-day holiday trip is long enough to enjoy (unlike a two-day trip),’ Nawijn surmised, ‘but short enough to minimise arguments with partner, family or friends.’ There's often…
3 minutes
Does guilting people really work?
minding people of their transgressions causes them to improve their behavior: People’s desires to see themselves as moral actors can contribute to their striving for and achievement of a sense of self-completeness. The authors use self-completion theory to predict (and show) that recalling one’s own (im)moral behavior leads to compensatory rather than consistent moral action as a way of completing the moral self. In three studies, people who recalled their immoral behavior reported greater participation in moral activities (Study 1),…
1 min read
Is nepotism more common than you think?
om a post by Miles Corak, via the Twitter feed of Tim Harford, author of the excellent book "Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure": The bottom line is that about 40% of us have at some point worked for exactly the same firm that at some point also employed our fathers. But if dad’s earnings put him in the top 25% these chances are above average, they start taking off if dad was in the top 5%, and reach…
1 min read
How do siblings shape your personality?
borah Kotz has an interesting piece in the Boston Globe that highlights research findings from the new book The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us: Firstborns and only-children, for example, have a 3-point higher IQ on average compared with those born second, according to 2007 Norwegian study cited in the book, and second children are about a point ahead of those born third... And: Parents can devote 100 percent of their child-raising resources to the first child until they must…
2 minutes
Children Don’t Make Us Happier
can't think of many things that go more against popular opinion but the research says no: This meta-analysis finds that parents report lower marital satisfaction compared with nonparents (d=-.19, r=-.10). There is also a significant negative correlation between marital satisfaction and number of children (d=-.13, r=-.06). The difference in marital satisfaction is most pronounced among mothers of infants (38% of mothers of infants have high marital satisfaction, compared with 62% of childless women). For men, the effect remains similar across ages…
2 minutes
Parent-Teacher Conferences Have Nothing To Do With Children
cording to the researcher quoted at Newswise, parent-teacher conferences are much more about parents trying to prove "they're a good parent" -- even if that means throwing their kids under the bus: “Parents and teachers behave in a way suggesting that they are each treating the conference as an occasion for their own performance review – using the student’s progress, or lack thereof, as a gauge of how the teacher is doing at his or her job of ‘being a…
1 min read
Parents Do Have Favorite Children
om Time Magazine, via Robin Hanson: 65% of mothers and 70% of fathers exhibited a preference for one child, usually the older one. … “The most likely candidate for the mother’s favorite was the firstborn son, and for the father, it was the last-born daughter.” Join over 151,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: 6 Hostage Negotiation Techniques That Will Get You What You Want How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI…
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