Jeremy Dean over at PsyBlog 1 and Chris Berdik at The Boston Globe 2 discuss an interesting study about stress by Alia Crum 3. Crum wanted to see if how we consider stress changes how we experience it. So one group of people were shown a video explaining the downsides of stress. The other group… Continue reading Stress and Belief About Stress
Category: Positive Thinking
When Praising Children Backfires
Po Bronson and Ashley Merriman, in their book NurtureShock, note that new studies indicate that certain kinds of praise of children can have an unintended consequence of making children risk averse 1. When a child is praised for their intelligence, there is a tendency for that child to steer away from difficult challenges. The avoidance… Continue reading When Praising Children Backfires
Suppressing Immune Systems With Sweets
This is not a story about the evils of sweets— in this story sweets is an innocent pawn… Robert Ader is a psychologist who stumbled upon an amazing discovery in the 1970s while studying taste aversion along with Nicholas Cohen. They wanted to see if by making rats nauseous every time they were fed something… Continue reading Suppressing Immune Systems With Sweets
The Job of Clever People
“The job of clever people is to ask difficult questions. The job of very clever people is to ask deceptively simple ones.” —The Economist 1 The Economist, September 7, 2013, The man who showed why firms exist[↩]https://buryebilgrill.online/footnotes
Are You Motivated More by Love, Fear, or Hatred?
I ran into a loose shower knob recently, and I see how it is like me. Properly functioning shower knobs are easily turned off… just keep turning until it stops. This loose knob did not work that way; I could easily turn it past the off position and it would drip. In order to turn… Continue reading Are You Motivated More by Love, Fear, or Hatred?
Defense Spending
We see other countries spending more on defense so we spend more on defense. Other countries see us spending more on defense so they spend more on defense. When karma is spoken of as a wheel and the only way to stop it is to get off the wheel, this example seems apt. It’s also a good… Continue reading Defense Spending