The holiday shopping season is almost upon us. Gift giving: What do you get someone? Will they like it? What will they give you? Will you like it? Quite frankly, the whole process can be fun but exhausting. Gifts can be tokens of social relationships, ways that we transmit impressions and feelings to one another. If you boil down the above questions, you are really…
The Psychology of Gift Giving: Unique and Expensive or Ordinary but Useful?
Understanding How Children Develop Empathy
The capacity to notice the distress of others, and to be moved by it, can be a critical component of what is called prosocial behavior, actions that benefit others: individuals, groups or society as a whole. Dr. Eisenberg, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University, draws a distinction between empathy and sympathy: Empathy is experiencing the same emotion or highly similar emotion to what the other…
10 Tools For Dealing With Holiday Depression
There has been a long standing myth that suicide rates increase over the holiday season. According to the Mayo Clinic, this is completely false. What is true is that the rates of depression and stress do increase. Here are ten solid tools to help you and deal if Santa also brings you some holiday blues. Keep your expectations balanced. You won’t get everything you want, things will go wrong, and…
How Technology is Changing The Way Children Think and Focus
Thinking. The capacity to reflect, reason, and draw conclusions based on our experiences, knowledge, and insights. It’s what makes us human and has enabled us to communicate, create, build, advance, and become civilized. Thinking encompasses so many aspects of who our children are and what they do, from observing, learning, remembering, questioning, and judging to innovating, arguing, deciding, and acting. There is also little doubt…
Foods That Soothe You To Sleep
“You are what you eat” is as true when you turn in at night as it is the rest of the day. The foods you choose may improve sleep quality and help prevent insomnia. Research shows that sleep affects diet and weight. In particular, lack of sleep may wreak havoc with your eating habits, amp up your appetite, alter your metabolism, and increase your odds of becoming obese. Emerging evidence suggests that…
Delaying Parenthood May Come At A Cost
With more and more young people waiting until their late 30s and early 40s to start their families. As Shulevitz points out, one in three female college graduates in the US waits until after age 30 to have her first child, while for women without a degree that number is just one in ten. The negative aspect of delaying parenthood Delaying can wreak havoc with the…
To Clear Negative Thoughts, Physically Throw them Away
Bothered by negative thoughts? Clearing your mind of them could be as simple as writing them down and physically throwing them away, according to a new study, published in the journal Psychological Science. “At some level, it can sound silly. But we found that it really works — by physically throwing away or protecting your thoughts, you influence how you end up using those thoughts,” study researcher Richard Petty,…
Reasoning is Sharper in a Foreign Langauge
The language we use affects the decisions we make, according to a new study. Participants made more rational decisions when money-related choices were posed in a foreign language that they had learned in a classroom setting than when they were asked in a native tongue. To study how language affects reasoning, University of Chicago psychologists looked at a well-known phenomenon: people are more risk-averse when…
New Love: A Short Shelf Life
In fairy tales, marriages last happily ever after. Science, however, tells us that wedded bliss has but a limited shelf life. American and European researchers tracked 1,761 people who got married and stayed married over the course of 15 years. The findings were clear: newlyweds enjoy a big happiness boost that lasts, on average, for just two years. Then the special joy wears off and…
7 Worst Habits of Workaholics
“Many people feel like they have to push themselves to unhealthy levels in order to succeed. But high-pressure jobs and long hours take a real toll on your immediate and future health,” says George Griffing, M.D., professor of internal medicine at Saint Louis University. Here, according to Griffing are the seven worst habits to watch out for in these workaholic times. 1. Forgetting to relax: While some stress can be…