Can depression be a beneficial thing?
a newsweek.com: (According to) Andrews and Thomson, depression alters thinking and behavior in beneficial ways. For instance: *People in the grip of depression tend to ruminate, to turn an issue over and over in the mind. If they're ruminating on why they can't get a date, that might seem bad—since it keeps the person depressed. But this way of thinking, note the scientists, is "often highly analytical." That can be useful, producing solutions to what tipped the person into depression in…
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Does being sad, or complaining, make you smarter?
d moods can actually be good for you, with an Australian study finding that being sad makes people less gullible, improves their ability to judge others and also boosts memory. The study, authored by psychology professor Joseph Forgas at the University of New South Wales, showed that people in a negative mood were more critical of, and paid more attention to, their surroundings than happier people, who were more likely to believe anything they were told. "Whereas positive mood seems…
1 min read
“House” is right. Patients do lie:
1,500 responders to a 2004 online survey by WebMD, 45% admitted they hadn't always told it exactly like it was -- with 13% saying they had "lied," and 32% saying they had "stretched the truth." Not included in those figures would be patients who "lie" without knowing they do so by withholding information because it slips their mind or they have no idea it could be useful. (Maybe Aunt Agnes would gladly tell about the time she snored so…
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Is Blaming Others Contagious?
a miller-mccune.com Observing someone blame another for their lack of success "increased the likelihood that people would make subsequent blame attributions for their own, unrelated failures," according to a paper just published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Deflecting responsibility, in other words, is infectious — but there appears to be an effective inoculation. "When people blame others for their mistakes, they learn less and perform worse," note the paper's co-authors, Nathanael Fast of the University of Southern California…
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Power Diminishes Perception and Perspective:
a insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu With great power comes great responsibility, so goes the famous saying. But responsibility is not all that seems to accompany puissance—dictators often exhibit extreme behavior, often in ways patently detrimental to their nations; managers are often accused of not understanding their subordinates’ points of view; and the dominant partner in a relationship often accused of being insensitive to the other’s needs. People in power, it seems, are prone to dismiss or, at the very least, misunderstand the viewpoints…
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What Is Sex Worth?
a bookofodds.com It really is hard to make an indecent living. Straight male prostitutes, like the protagonist of HBO’s Hung, have to face hard facts: The odds that a woman has visited one are only 1 in 100. Good luck getting her to hire you. By comparison, men are far more inclined to pay for sex; 1 in 6.67 has paid for sex That males lay out more for sex than females do is a general rule in the animal…
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Managers’ hiring practices vary by race, ethnicity:
ite, Asian and Hispanic managers tend to hire more whites and fewer blacks than black managers do, according to a new study out of the University of Miami School of Business Administration. Using more than two years of personnel data from a large U.S. retail chain, the study found that when a black manager in a typical store is replaced by a white, Asian or Hispanic manager, the share of newly hired blacks falls from 21 to 17 percent, and…
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Sex at MIT (Charts and data presented. After all, this is MIT):
scinating study of sex at MIT here. Join over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More Successful How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior Expert
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