Happy Saturday, sweet readers!
Can you believe it’s the last weekend of August? I know summer doesn’t technically end as soon as August is over, but…where did the summer go?!
Well, before you head out to enjoy the weekend, take some time to catch up on the science of spirituality, why having a best friend as a teenager helps develop a sense of self later in life, how winning the lottery will contribute little to your level of happiness, and more.
The Science of Spirituality: A Psychologist and a Neuroscientist Explain Being ‘In The Flow’: Although spirituality is making a big mainstream comeback, the idea of being “in the flow” (as if something bigger has taken over and you’re just letting it happen) isn’t completely related to spiritualism. When we’re “in the flow” or “in the zone,” it could be that we’re just getting out of our own way.
What Dogs Can Teach Us About OCD and Cancer: The title doesn’t exactly do this justice. Because we’ve had success studying DNA in certain dog breeds (for example, it’s helped us isolate the genes that causes narcolepsy, a neurological sleep disorder), scientists now are looking at the DNA of a slew of breeds to research a ton of medical conditions, from obsessive-compulsive disorder and autism to epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease.
How Winning the Lottery Affects Happiness, According to Psychology Research: Along with showing that many of us aren’t that great at processing just how unlikely it is that we’ll win and that people with lower incomes are more likely to buy tickets, various psychological research shows that winning all that money doesn’t make people happier in the long run. Overall, if you’re going to end up being about as happy as you were before you won.
Why Your Teenage BFF Is Good for Your Mental Health: A new study shows that teenagers around 15 and 16 years old who have a close friendship rather than a large group of people they’re not all that close with were less likely to suffer from social anxiety and depression and more likely to have a solid sense of self-worth by the time they’re 25 years old.
If You’re Super Indecisive, Psychology Says Technology Is to Blame: We think if we have more options we have a better chance at choosing exactly what we want (or, at least, the closest to it?). However, because our brains have a limited working memory (which, simply put, means we consider small sets of information when there’s a decision to make), we actually make better decisions when we have only a few options from which to choose.
YouTube Stars Stress Out, Just Like the Rest of Us: Sounds like common sense, right? We all stress from time to time. However, the reasons for these YouTubers are what make it interesting. Feeling depression and anxiety from living an overly curated life (i.e. constantly coming up with new content to keep their channels relative), working to always look transparent, authentic, and accessible, and finding happiness only when they get more followers, more likes, more video views, and more praise have led some YouTube celebs to log off for good.
Source: psychcenteral
