Tag Archives: psychology

Smell and Memory

Sniff sniff. Sniff. Have you ever had that experience where you smell something and are whisked back in time to your childhood? A lot of people have. Proust wasn’t just making it up with the whole madeleine thing, you know. … Continue reading

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happy people live longer

Yet again, I find reason to be happy that I am happy. Hm. That is an odd sentence. Anyway, a new study from the UK finds that happy people live longer. I wrote it up for ScienceNOW last week. This … Continue reading

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brains are somethin’ else

Forget lessons. You can get better at putting just by using a famous person’s golf club. Ok, not even. A golf club that you are *told* belonged to a famous person. I wrote about it for ScienceNOW today. Confidence is … Continue reading

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men with sexy dance moves

Lots of male animals perform dances as part of their mating display. They’re trying to impress females, the theory goes, by showing how strong/agile/graceful/whatever they are, with the idea being that these are qualities the females would like to pass … Continue reading

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older and better

It’s the thing I didn’t realize about getting older: life gets better. Nobody really knows why, but a lead theory is that the older you get, the better you are at letting stuff go. You know who you are, you … Continue reading

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throw some haggis on the barbie

I keep having this problem with foreign languages. I learned Norwegian – a little in Minnesota, a little in Oslo. Then I moved to Trondheim and discovered that nobody outside of Oslo speaks the nice standard Norwegian that you learn … Continue reading

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babies in the news

Newborn babies might seem like they don’t do anything but cry, sleep, eat, and excrete – but there’s really a lot going on as that tiny human adjusts to a whole new world. Today for ScienceNOW I wrote about a … Continue reading

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[expletive deleted]

Hey, guess what – swearing might actually be good for you. Or good for decreasing pain, anyway. For a study that came out this weekend, a researcher in the UK had a bunch of undergrads stick their hands in buckets … Continue reading

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