Is postponement the key to resisting temptation?
lling yourself "Not now, but later" is far more powerful than "No, you can't have that." From Willpower: Resdiscovering the Greatest Human Strength: ...people who had told themselves Not now, but later were less troubled with visions of chocolate cake than the other two groups... And: Those in the postponement condition actually ate significantly less than those in the self-denial condition...The result suggests that telling yourself I can have this later operates in the mind a bit like having it…
2 minutes
What’s an easy way to increase self-control?
rk on improving your posture. From Willpower: Resdiscovering the Greatest Human Strength: Unexpectedly, the best results came from the group working on posture. That tiresome old advice—“Sit up straight!”—was more useful than anyone had imagined. By overriding their habit of slouching, the students strengthened their willpower and did better at tasks that had nothing to do with posture. The improvement was most pronounced among the students who had followed the advice most diligently (as measured by the daily logs the…
1 min read
Why is it so hard finding a spouse in NYC?
o many choices makes people ridiculously picky. From Willpower: Resdiscovering the Greatest Human Strength: For a column in 1995, Tierney did a semiscientific survey to investigate a New York phenomenon: the huge number of intelligent and attractive people who complained that it was impossible to find a romantic partner. Manhattan had the highest percentage of single people of any county in America except for an island in Hawaii originally settled as a leper colony. What was keeping New Yorkers apart?…
2 minutes
Is envy our default setting?
s. It requires mental effort to not be envious. Via Peer Reviewed By My Neurons: Envy is a shitty thing. In addition to feeling bad that there’s something you don’t have, you often feel bad about how stupid it is that you’re envious. The good news is that a new study by Jan Crusius and Thomas Mussweiler should alleviate the negative feelings that stem from the latter situation. Through a series of experiments they found that envy appears to be our…
2 minutes
Can skipping breakfast lead to murder?
e book Willpower: Resdiscovering the Greatest Human Strength points out some fascinating connections between eating, self-control and violent behavior. Kids who skip breakfast misbehave more than kids who eat their Wheaties. After given a snack, all the children are little angels again: All the children in a class were told to skip breakfast one morning, and then, by random assignment, half of the children were given a good breakfast at school. The others got nothing. During the first part of…
3 minutes
Can Moneyball statistics be used to beat Jeopardy?
R covers the fascinating story of Roger Craig, a PhD in computer science, who used data-mining and statistics to make hundreds of thousands of dollars on Jeopardy: Using data-mining and text-clustering techniques, Craig grouped questions by category to figure out which topics were statistically common — and which weren't. "Obviously it's impossible to know everything," Jones says. "So he was trying to decide: What things did he need to know? He prepared himself in a way that I think is…
2 minutes
2 Proven Tricks For Focusing Your Mind And Increasing Performance
sitive self-talk and positive mental imagery: Self-leadership theory can be described as the 'process of influencing oneself' as opposed to the influence of leaders over followers (Manz, 1983, 1986). We focus on and develop a model for a particular aspect of self-leadership - thought self-leadership emphasizing two primary elements, self-talk and mental imagery. The major thrust of this model is that employees can influence or lead themselves by utilizing specific cognitive strategies that focus on individual self-dialogue and mental imagery.…
3 minutes
How much of your behavior is unconsciously determined by your surroundings?
great deal of it, potentially. People primed with ideas (like "rudeness") demonstrated those behaviors more readily (interrupting the experimenter) without realizing it: Previous research has shown that trait concepts and stereotype become active automatically in the presence of relevant behavior or stereotyped-group features. Through the use of the same priming procedures as in previous impression formation research, Experiment 1 showed that participants whose concept of rudeness was printed interrupted the experimenter more quickly and frequently than did participants primed…
1 min read
