Category: Studies

  • Reading and Empathy

    Cheering news for lit snobs via the NYT.  Empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence get a boost from reading–certain reading: [A] series of five experiments conducted by social psychologists at The New School for Social Research in New York City, people who read excerpts from literary fiction (Don DeLillo, Alice Munro, Wendell Berry) scored better…

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  • The Importance of Mind-Wandering

    A collection of boredom studies from Wired: The secret isn’t boredom per se: It’s how boredom makes us think. When people are immersed in monotony, they automatically lapse into a very special form of brain activity: mind-wandering. In a culture obsessed with efficiency, mind-wandering is often derided as a lazy habit, the kind of thinking we rely on…

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  • Relationship Health

    Extra motivation for figuring out how to get along better?:   The way you relate to your partner can affect your long-term mental and physical health, study shows (Science Daily). “We already know from prior research that people in stable, happy marriages experience better overall health than do those in more conflicted relationships,” said Professor Hicks.…

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  • Better Sex Through Therapy?

    Study Links Empathy, Self-Esteem, and Autonomy with Increased Sexual Enjoyment (jhsph.edu): Sexual pleasure among young adults (ages 18-26) is linked to healthy psychological and social development, according to a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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  • Rejection Pain

    Social Rejection Hurts Like Physical Pain (PsychCentral): “On the surface, spilling a hot cup of coffee on yourself and thinking about how rejected you feel when you look at the picture of a person that you recently experienced an unwanted break-up with may seem to elicit very different types of pain.  But this research shows…

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