Science of the SpiritS


Target

Having a 'plan B' can hurt your chances of success

Katherine Milkman, Jihae Shin
Scientific American
Tue, 19 Jul 2016 15:31 UTC
Preparing a backup plan can increase the odds you'll need it

coloured memo notes
© JOH_2931 via Flickr CC by 2.0Most people think that making a backup plan is always a good idea, and previous scholarship has focused almost exclusively on the benefits of planning. However, we highlight an unintended cost of making backup plans: a lower chance of successfully achieving your primary goal.
Imagine two aspiring entrepreneurs: Meg and Jen. They are equally capable and well-connected, and they are working on equally promising startup ideas. In fact, imagine that Meg and Jen differ in just one respect: Meg is thinking about what a good fallback job would be and how she plans to pursue it if her current startup fails while Jen is not.

Who do you think will work harder and in turn, have a better chance of success: Meg or Jen? Might merely thinking through a backup plan be enough to undermine Meg's motivation and likelihood of success?

This was the question that we wanted to answer with our research. And yes, we find in a paper published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes that merely contemplating a backup plan can reduce the effort you put forth to achieve a goal, thus hurting your chances of achieving it. Most people think that making a backup plan is always a good idea, and previous scholarship has focused almost exclusively on the benefits of planning. However, we highlight an unintended cost of making backup plans: a lower chance of successfully achieving your primary goal.

Comment: Related articles:

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Bulb

Psychology study cautions: Think twice before overdoing the positive thinking


PSYblog
Fri, 05 Feb 2016 21:23 UTC
positive thinking
© wsj.com
The unexpected negative effect of positive thinking on mental health.

Dreaming about positive events in the future makes you feel better now, but may make you feel worse later on, new research finds.

The more positively people fantasized about the future, the more depressive symptoms people experienced up to seven months later, the study found.

The findings kick against the ubiquitous self-help advice to 'think positive'.

Comment: Why positive thinking may be harmful for some

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Bandaid

Veterans coming home - who tends to their moral injuries?

Micael Bogar
Yes! Magazine
Mon, 04 Jul 2016 17:23 UTC
combat vets
© Micael BogarMicael Bogar and her brother
Listening can help ease the transition home for veterans and ultimately heal us as a nation.

In the summer of 2008, my younger brother Jason was killed in Afghanistan. He was 25 years old. It has been almost eight years since he died, and while the experience of losing a family member to war deserves many pages, I wanted to write this for all the civilians struggling to understand their role in supporting veterans as they come home.

I've now spent enough time away from the trauma of that summer to reflect on what could have been. When Jason came back from his first deployment to Iraq in the summer of 2005, he was a mess. I was coming home from the Peace Corps, and he was coming home from combat. He was quiet and brooding in a way he had never been before.

Comment: The practice of listening
Listening informs our decisions so that we can make choices for what is best for us, our families, our community, and our planet. But what starts to happen as we age and become governed by the ego is that we lose that curiosity, that hunger, to learn more. We become set in our ways, we think we may know enough to get by and be happy. So we stop listening, or we only listen to what we choose we want to hear. We stop paying attention and close ourselves off from possibilities and opportunities. The universe sends us glaring signs and we ignore them because we think we've figured it out. As you well know, nobody does—and maybe nobody ever will. But that is what life is all about: to search, to stay open, to receive, to love, to, to connect, to grow... And to listen.


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Books

You are what you read: How deep reading is effective brain exercise

Alexa Erickson
Collective Evolution
Mon, 18 Jul 2016 18:22 UTC
reading
Are you a tabloid loving, pop culture obsessed, meme and GIF intrigued person? Do you like sensational novels to pass the time?

According to a new study published in the International Journal of Business Administration in May 2016, your love for "light reading," and web-based aggregators like Reddit, Tumblr and BuzzFeed may not be doing you any good.

The researchers concluded that what students read in college directly affects the level of writing they achieve. In fact, students who pick up academic journals, literary fiction, or general nonfiction wrote with greater syntactic sophistication than those who preferred the former options. Furthermore, the highest scores came from those who resorted to academic journals, and the lowest to solely web-based content.But then again, "good writing" is often subjective. What we're really talking about here is whether our overall ability to convey what we want to say comes across well to the masses.

Comment: More on the benefits of reading:

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Question

Is ignorance a choice?

Greg Calise
Wake-up World
Mon, 18 Jul 2016 17:40 UTC
printing press
Throughout recorded history, humankind have had very short lifespans. After the advent of agriculture, the average life expectancy shrunk to much less than 40 years. This is not a lot of time to figure out life. On top of that, with the advent of civilization, people had to toil most of the day under feudal lords. Most of them were slaves. Knowledge was scarce. Whatever knowledge was available was held by the elite. The high priests, royalty and the wealthy were the only ones with access to any knowledge. Most people were illiterate. They lived in ignorance.

At the advent of the printing press, knowledge became more available, especially in the developed countries. Libraries became common place and books became affordable. In many places around the world, people are offered a basic education for free. Our life span has nearly doubled, and knowledge exponentiated. Now most people have access to basic knowledge about atoms, quantum theory, stars and galaxies and so many things in between.
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Pills

Probiotics can be used to help with depression by helping people let go of the past


Psy Blog
Wed, 15 Apr 2015 01:46 UTC
sad woman
© Shutterstock
Probiotics may stop sadness turning into depression by helping people let go of the past, a new study finds.

Researchers at the Leiden Institute of Brain and Cognition found that probiotics stopped people ruminating so much. Rumination is when people focus on bad experiences and feelings from the past.

Dr Laura Steenbergen, the study's first author, said:
"Rumination is one of the most predictive vulnerability markers of depression. Persistent ruminative thoughts often precede and predict episodes of depression."
In the study 40 people were given a sachet to take with water or milk every day for four weeks. Half of the people received sachets that contained a multi-species probiotic. The other half received a placebo for the four weeks.
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Clipboard

The basic laws of human stupidity

Michael R. Eades
Protein Power
Mon, 28 Oct 2013 08:39 UTC
Image
Stupid people are everywhere. And, as we all know, no class, race, sex, occupation, political affiliation, country of origin, or degree of wealth has a monopoly on stupidity. Stupid people cause profound damage to individuals and to society at large. But, for the most part, stupid people operate in a kind of anonymity. Consequently, we are frequently ambushed by them and pay the often hefty price.

I say stupid people operate in anonymity not because we all don't know stupid people, but because stupid people don't have a huge literature identifying them. There are countless books written on how to be smarter, how to improve critical thinking skills, how to learn faster and how to develop acumen in all sorts of fields of endeavor.

There are books on the traits of highly successful people and on the classification of various intellectual skills. But where is the Field Guide to Stupid People, the reference source we need to identify and avoid - as much as is possible - the often irreparable harm such people can inflict? Such a book doesn't exist. Or at least I thought it didn't.

All that changed a few months ago when I was in Paris, roaming through the English language section of my favorite Parisian bookstore, Galignani.
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Family

Labelling and describing feelings reduces anxiety even if you don't think it will


PSYBlog
Sun, 17 Jul 2016 21:37 UTC
fear and anxiety
Labelling anxiety — putting the feeling into words — can reduce the fear response, research finds.

In fact, the more fearful words people use to describe their anxiety, the more their anxiety reduces.

However, the study also found that people don't expect that labelling their emotions will reduce anxiety.

But, recordings of their skin conductance show that it does.

The study compared labelling anxiety with other common methods of reducing anxiety, including distraction and reappraisal.

Comment: Talking about your feelings will help you cope with scary and stressful situations.

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Heart

87-year-old man builds intricate cathedral for wife with Alzheimer's

Brianna Acuesta
True Activist
Fri, 15 Jul 2016 19:25 UTC
Man and woman
© Inside Edition
When Gerald LeSiege's wife of 60 years came down with Alzheimer's, he took up woodworking as a hobby to help him cope with his wife's illness and be a caretaker to her. After he realized he had a knack for the art, he decided to build something for his wife that she would love without needing to explain why it was for her.

The two apparently loved traveling to Europe, so he chose to build a cathedral reminiscent of those in older European cities to remind her of their time together and to make her happy. LeSiege told Inside Edition:
"What got to our heart, and made us feel real warm and close, was all of the architectural beauty of Europe."
For several months, Gerald spent hours everyday working on his design for a five-foot cathedral with lights and a clock inside of it. He had his wife by his side as he constructed the tower.

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People 2

New study says opposites attract, but only if you're single


PSYBlog
Sun, 17 Jul 2016 17:26 UTC
Young Couple
© redOrbit
When people are single they are more attracted to faces that are dissimilar to their own, new research finds.

But, when people are already in a relationship, they are more attracted to faces that look similar to their own.

In other words: opposites attract for single people, but not for those in a relationship.

The reason that dissimilar faces attract could be down to avoiding incest or other people with similar genes.

So, when people are single, they are automatically less attracted to faces that look like their own.

Comment: More on the opposites attract phenomenon:

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