Category: Studies

  • Meditation and Attention Span

    PsychCentral reports on a study that shows improved attention span–long-term–following a meditation retreat. “People may think meditation is something that makes you feel good and going on a meditation retreat is like going on vacation, and you get to be at peace with yourself.  That’s what people think until they try it. Then you realize how…

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  • Relationship Rules

    Revisiting the conventional wisdom about getting along. [A]lthough a lot of modern relationship advice boils down to keeping positive, this isn’t always the best way to go. When things are dreamy, being positive is probably good advice. But this research suggests that rocky relationships can benefit from negative processes.

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  • Word World

    PsychCentral looks at a study about how people think different thoughts when using different languages–Arabic and Hebrew are the testers. The study found that Arab Israelis’ positive associations with their own people are weaker when they are tested in Hebrew than when they are tested in Arabic.

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  • Trusty Robots

    PsychCentral: Robots Help in Study of Trust. To test the hypothesis, researchers had test subjects interact with the social robot, Nexi, in an attempt to judge her trustworthiness. Unbeknownst to participants, Nexi has been programmed to make gestures while speaking with selected participants — gestures that the team hypothesizes could determine whether or not she’s deemed trustworthy.…

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  • Creativity Crisis

    Newsweek sounds an alarm re: declining “CQ” scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.

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