More money makes people less human: Study

money-roll

Psychology has only recently begun seriously investigating how having money, that major marker of status in the modern world, ­affects psychosocial behavior.

At the University of California, Berkeley two undergraduate students are playing a Monopoly game that one of them has no chance of winning. A team of psychologists has rigged it so that skill, brains, savvy, and luck—those ingredients that ineffably combine to create success in games as in life—have been made immaterial. Here, the only thing that matters is money.

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Not all calories created equal: Study

not all calories created equal

A diet based on healthy carbs offers best chance of keeping weight off.

A study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that a diet based on healthy carbohydrates—rather than a low-fat or low-carbohydrate diet—offers the best chance of keeping weight off without bringing unwanted side effects.

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Crowded coffee shops can fire up your creativity: Study

coffee shop

New research shows that the moderate noise level in busy cafés also perks up your creative cognition.

How quiet or noisy should your workplace be in order to optimize creativity?

Five experiments were conducted by researchers led by Ravi Mehta to help understand how ambient sounds affect creative cognition.  In one key trial, they tested people’s creativity at different levels of background noise by asking participants to brainstorm ideas for a new type of mattress or enumerate uncommon uses for a common object.

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Legal medical marijuana shops do not boost drug use in teens: Colorado study

legal marijuana

There is no correlation between an uptick in recent teen drug use and the increased availability of pot.

Teen pot use has not been boosted by the surge in outlets for legal medical marijuana, according to a new study by economists at University of Colorado Denver and other colleges.

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Women held back from advancement in the workplace by colleagues’ wives

businesswomen

Only 28% of men, compared with 49% of women, see gender bias as still prevalent in the workplace.

There hasn’t been much progress for women seeking top leadership roles in the workplace in the past decade.  The percentages of women running large companies, or serving as managing partners of their law firms, or sitting on corporate boards have barely budged even though female graduates continue to pour out of colleges and professional schools.

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Study: Parents today are happier than their childless counterparts

parents

Looks like having kids may not make you miserable after all.

Based on early research, the conventional wisdom that’s developed over the past few decades has been that parents are less happy, more depressed and have less-satisfying marriages than their childless counterparts.

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Slackers’ brains are hard-wired to be lazy

slacker

Brain scans can show the difference between ”go-getters” and ”slackers”.

Scientists have identified neural pathways that appear to influence an individual’s willingness to work hard to earn money. Lazy people who prefer to live off others may have brains that are wired for under-achievement, according to a new study.

Energy drinks are destroying teens’ teeth

energy-drinks

Energy drink habit among teens is causing irreversible damage to teeth as the high acidity levels in the drinks erode tooth enamel.

Scientists have warned that teenagers’ love of energy drinks is taking a terrible toll on their teeth.  A study published in the Academy of General Dentistry charted an alarming increase in the consumption of both energy and sports drinks among young adults in the U.S. who use them to help get through the day.

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