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  • All Hands on Deck

    Brains, animals, literal-metaphorical confusions–Robert Sapolsky considers, recalling this famous study along the way: Volunteers would meet one of the experimenters, believing that they would be starting the experiment shortly. In reality, the experiment began when the experimenter, seemingly struggling with an armful of folders, asks the volunteer to briefly hold their coffee. As the key…

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  • Neuromarketing

    Using brain science to make you buy things. Neuromarketing’s raison d’être derives from the fact that the brain expends only 2 percent of its energy on conscious activity, with the rest devoted largely to unconscious processing…If pitches are to succeed, they need to reach the subconscious level of the brain, the place where consumers develop…

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  • Living in the Moment

    A app-based study supports mindfulness as a route to happiness. “A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” wrote psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert of Harvard University who used an iPhone web app to gather 250,000 data points on people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions as they…

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  • Age and Happiness

    Good news relayed by PsychCentral:  Emotional Stability, Happiness Increase with Age “As people get older, they’re more aware of mortality,” Carstensen said. “So when they see or experience moments of wonderful things, that often comes with the realization that life is fragile and will come to an end. But that’s a good thing. It’s a…

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  • Seeing Meat v. Aggression

    In case you were wondering:  Seeing Meat Makes People Significantly Less Aggressive. “We used imagery of meat that was ready to eat. In terms of behaviour, with the benefit of hindsight, it would make sense that our ancestors would be calm, as they would be surrounded by friends and family at meal time,” Kachanoff explained.…

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