What can you do to prevent nightmares?
y want to try discussing things that scare you after they happen. Talking about a horror movie after seeing it reduced nightmares. Via Brain Candy: Science, Paradoxes, Puzzles, Logic, and Illogic to Nourish Your Neurons: And by exploring how people stop these dreams and fears, researchers are learning how we might combat more serious PTSD. For instance, researchers find that talking about a horror movie afterward reduces the occurrence of bad dreams. Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via…
1 min read
What male quality is the best predictor of whether a woman will orgasm?
bsp; How in love he is? No. How much money the guy makes? Nope. Amount of sexual experience? Wrong. Best predictor was how symmetrical the man's physique was; in other words, how hot a body he has. Via Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty: Fluctuating asymmetry turned out to be a better predictor of female orgasm than the couple’s feeling of love, the investment of either party in the relationship, the male’s potential earnings, or the level of…
1 min read
Can having a babyface get you sent to jail?
bsp; If you're on trial for something malicious, you're less likely to go to jail if you have an innocent-looking babyface. However, if you're on trial for something negligent, you're more likely to end up behind bars because of those same naive looks. Via In Your Face: The New Science of Human Attraction What’s more alarming, perhaps, is that baby-faced looks affect the way individuals fare in court cases. Specifically, if your crime is one that involves a certain degree…
1 min read
10 things most parents are dead wrong about:
bsp; Talking back is a good thing. It can make your kid smarter. Never spanking can be worse for children than spanking them. Peer pressure is more often a good thing. You have no idea what's going on in your kid's head most of the time. Reading to your kids? You're probably doing it wrong. Your child is right that more homework is probably a waste of time. There is no need to feel guilty about bribing your kid for…
1 min read
10 tips for giving a world class presentation:
bsp; Practice in front of a large audience if possible. Rhetorical questions make your arguments more persuasive. Use a lot of imagery. You can create an instant feeling of familiarity with an audience by using the word "we." There are a number of tips for making a good first impression, being more persuasive and being more charismatic. Stand up straight to feel powerful and confident. We like people who are prideful. Guys, don't be modest. Trying to seem smart makes…
2 minutes
“You can’t bullshit a bullshitter” — or can you?
bsp; It's true: people who could accurately identify lies were better at producing hard to detect lies. Both the ability to deceive others, and the ability to detect deception, has long been proposed to confer an evolutionary advantage. Deception detection has been studied extensively, and the finding that typical individuals fare little better than chance in detecting deception is one of the more robust in the behavioral sciences. Surprisingly, little research has examined individual differences in lie production ability. As…
2 minutes
4 things you didn’t know about gossip:
bsp; Office gossip is 70-90% factually correct. "Gossipers feel more supported and positive gossip -- praising somebody -- may lead to a short-term boost in gossipers' self-esteem." And positive gossip is a good idea because what you say about others becomes associated with you. Gossip does serve a positive purpose: It helps police bad behavior in a social network and relieves stress. Gossip makes us less selfish; "The threat of gossip can increase fairness and hold selfishness in check." The…
1 min read
If multitasking doesn’t work, why do we do it so often?
bsp; It makes us more emotionally satisfied, even if it makes us less productive. Via Eurekalert: The findings showed that multitasking often gave the students an emotional boost, even when it hurt their cognitive functions, such as studying. "There's this myth among some people that multitasking makes them more productive," said Zheng Wang, lead author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University. "But they seem to be misperceiving the positive feelings they get from multitasking.…
1 min read
