Resilience
On Road to Recovery, Past Adversity Provides a Map (NYT)
New research suggests that resilience may have at least as much to do with how often people have faced adversity in past as it does with who they are — their personality, their genes, for example — or what they’re facing now. That is, the number of life blows a person has taken may affect his or her mental toughness more than any other factor.
Sustainable Love
The latest in relationship science relayed by Tara Parker-Pope.
“People have a fundamental motivation to improve the self and add to who they are as a person,” Dr. Lewandowski says. “If your partner is helping you become a better person, you become happier and more satisfied in the relationship.”
Skin Deep
A study shows people more accurately assessing personality traits of attractive people.
“If people think Jane is beautiful, and she is very organized and somewhat generous, people will see her as more organized and generous than she actually is,” Biesanz said. “Despite this bias, our study shows that people will also correctly discern the relative ordering of Jane’s personality traits – that she is more organized than generous – better than others they find less attractive.”
Study: Video Games Are Good For You
Video Games Boost Brain Power, Multitasking Skills (NPR)
Pratt says playing these video games changes your ability to learn, and to find and integrate new information. “Video game players are able to pick up very subtle, statistical irregularities in environments and use them to their advantage,” Pratt says. “And these same irregularities in environments are the things that help us guide our behaviors on a daily basis.”
On Yawning
Theories about why people–and animals–yawn. One tidbit:
Children under 5 are not subject to contagious yawning, but adult humans, chimpanzees, monkeys and dogs — animals with advanced social skills — are. Apparently an understanding of the mental states of others is required before yawning becomes catching
Mindfulness Exercises
From The Mindful Way Through Anxiety–or, rather, from the book’s website–some audio mindfulness exercises. (The promo material at the beginning of each ends quickly.)
Narcissism Bites the Dust
NYT: A Fate That Narcissists Will Hate: Being Ignored.
Narcissists, much to the surprise of many experts, are in the process of becoming an endangered species. Not that they face imminent extinction — it’s a fate much worse than that. They will still be around, but they will be ignored. The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (due out in 2013, and known as DSM-5) has eliminated five of the 10 personality disorders that are listed in the current edition.
Reaction underway: “Odd and haphazard,” says PsychCentral.
Siblings Split
Theories about how siblings develop such different personalities (NPR).
“Children in the same family are more similar than children taken at random from the population,” Plomin says, “but not much more.” In fact, in terms of personality, we are similar to our siblings only about 20 percent of the time.
Mastery v. Performance
PsychCental: Personal Goal-Setting Strategy Affects Relationships
According to investigators, goal-setting behavior may influence whether people will be comfortable in sharing and communicating. For example, people with “mastery goals” want to improve themselves. Maybe they want to get better grades, make more sales, or land that triple toe loop. On the other hand, people with what psychologists call “performance goals” are trying to outperform others — to get a better grade than a friend or be Employee of the Year.
Stressed in L.A.
The APA’s “Stress in America” survey has some things to say about living in Los Angeles.
–Almost three in 10 (29 percent) residents report having a great deal of stress (defined as an 8, 9 or 10 on a scale of 1 to 10), compared to 24 percent of Americans overall.
–LA residents are more likely than Americans overall to point to the economy as a source of stress (75 percent vs. 65 percent) and less likely to cite family responsibilities (47 percent vs. 58 percent).
–The percentage of individuals who report feeling stressed out at work jumped significantly, from 29 percent in 2009 to 39 percent in 2010.
True for you? You’re not alone.