mind over matter

Photo by victoriapeckham
Well, it’s nearly Valentine’s Day, and love is in the air. Not the air within a ten-foot radius of me, mind you, but I’m sure it’s out there somewhere. So, since I am a hopeless romantic at heart (and making a concerted effort not to sound bitter), this week’s posts will be all […]

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Mothers Against Dangerous Decisions are gonna love this one: new research suggests that parental involvement leads to less boozing, toking and sexing for college freshmen.
The study, conducted at Brigham Young University (appropriate!), found that students who talk regularly with their fathers were less likely to do drugs or engage in risky sexual behaviors. When students kept […]

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                                                                            photo by technicolorcavalry
Before you pull out your credit card, consider whether you’re just drowning your sorrows in an extravagant purchase. A new study from four universities found that sadness, even temporary, leads people to open their wallets wide. Participants watched either a sad video clip or an emotionally neutral one, then were given the […]

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  Photo by Kumon
Today I came across the charming headline “Your marriage is going to get worse.” Nice use of direct address, guys. I am praying that this was not the straw that broke the camel’s back for any estranged spouses out there.
(Also, check out the creative illustration of an old couple arguing in front of […]

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By now you’ve probably noticed I’m no slave to timeliness (psshhht psych research is as valid today as it was four days ago, right?), but today I had a real mini-dilemma deciding which fabulous date-specific adjective to focus on: Fat or Super. (In America, it needn’t be either/or.) I ate copious amounts of jambalaya for dinner, and so, feeling […]

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Well, this seems appropriate on a very Monday-y Monday: new research from Harvard suggests that a 45-minute shallow nap can aid memory performance. Somebody pass me a pillow.
The 33 participants arrived at the lab at 11:30 a.m. and were trained on the declarative memory tasks at 12:15. At 1 p.m., about half the subjects took […]

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Interesting! A recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO) found that suicidal risk factors are similar across the globe, according to an article in PsychCentral. Risk factors include having a mental disorder and being female (check), younger (check), unmarried (check) and less educated (phew).
The study compared 17 different countries on suicide prevalence and risk factors. […]

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Continuing with this unintentional theme of “Research proves what I could’ve told ‘em for free,” researchers concluded that growing older hurts decision making. This isn’t to say that older people have a more difficult time making decisions, as I mused a few days ago in a post about clinical hoarding. Rather, seniors have a hard […]

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