life

Be Less Angry by Getting Educated and Ageing

- Adam Clare

Researchers from the University of Toronto have found out some the primary reasons people get angry. Thanks to their research we now know what one can do to lower their anger levels: get an education and keep on living.

It was found that younger people experience more frequent anger than older adults. This is mainly due to the fact that younger people are more likely to feel time pressures, economic hardship, and interpersonal conflict in the workplace (three core stressors that elevate anger levels).

Feeling rushed for time is the strongest predictor of anger, especially the “low-grade” forms like feeling annoyed, revealed the study.

Having children in the household is associated with angry feelings and behaviour (i.e., yelling) and these patterns are stronger among women compared to men.

As compared to people with fewer years of education, the well educated are less likely to experience anger, and when they do, they are more likely to act proactively (e.g., trying to change the situation or talking it over).

Read more at the India Times.

Time in Nature Makes People More Caring

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

This is good news for nature lovers and another reason to go outside and enjoy the world: the more time you spend experiencing nature makes you more caring.

Recent research suggests that spending time in nature actually makes people “more caring.” The studies, by University of Rochester psychologists Netta Weinstein, Andrew Przybylski, and Richard Ryan, showed that people exposed to nature (well, mostly slideshows of nature) put a higher value on intrinsic aspirations, such as doing good in the world or having meaningful relationships, and lower value on extrinsic aspirations, like making a lot of cash or admired by many people. Now as I mentioned, the participants didn’t actually live outdoors for a while or anything as part of the study. Rather, in three of the studies, they looked at images of either the built environment or landscapes and such. And in the fourth, some participants were assigned to work in a laboratory either with or without plants around them. Then they answered a series of questions or were given tests of generosity. “The result? People who were in contact with nature were more willing to open their wallets and share. As with aspirations, the higher the immersion in nature, the more likely subjects were to be generous with their winnings.”

Read more and get more links at Boing Boing.

The Dark Side of Hope

- Adam Clare

You’ve probably heard people say that we should have reasonable goals and, you know what, they’re right. If you have reasonable expectations about the world around you, you can have a happier life – some new research backs this idea up by studying happiness in people after a major surgery.

GIVING up hope can actually make some people living with a serious illness happier, according to US researchers who have found a “dark side of hope”.

A study by the University of Michigan Health Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine involved a group of adults who had their colons removed.

In total 41 people were told their colostomy was reversible and they could undergo a second operation to reconnect their bowels after several months and get rid of their colostomy bag.

Another 30 individuals were told that the colostomy was permanent.

The study, published in the latest issue of Health Psychology, found the second group, the one without hope, reported being happier over the next six months than those with reversible colostomies.

“We think they were happier because they got on with their lives,” researcher Peter Ubel said.

Read the rest of the article.

Good Posture for a Good Life

- Adam Clare

Your mother was right, you should sit up straight. A new study has been done that examined how your posture when sitting affects your self-image.

Read about the posture study here.

Brinol et al. (2009) divided 71 students into four groups, then fed them a cover story about why they had to adopt two different poses: half slouching, the other half sitting up straight, chests puffed out. These two groups were then split again, and half were asked to write down three positive personal traits, the other half three negative personal traits.
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The results showed that people who had been sitting up straight were much more likely to believe the positive things they’d been writing about themselves, whereas those who were slouching weren’t so sure. Meanwhile a doubtful posture had very little effect on the half who were thinking negatively about themselves.

Printable Guide to Help You Have a Good Work/Life Balance

- Adam Clare

The Day Grid Balancer is a printable guide to help people who work too much bring back some living into their life. The author is open about the fact that it won’t work for everyone so he encourages you to download the source files and edit the document to reflect your thinking, luckily he posted it under a creative commons license.

Now could be a good time to review your life/work balance so you can make sure that everyday is a good day.

For my initial pass, I created a single sheet of paper to act as the focus of your day throughout the entire week. It’s really just a glorified to-do list, designed around the idea of noting when you’re doing the kind of things that you’d like to be doing every day. By the end of the week, you should get an idea of whether or not you were successful. Since it’s a single sheet, you can keep it on a handy clip-board and carry it around with you.

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