Psychologist logo
Feed your brain
Research

Link feast

In case you missed them – 10 of the best psychology links from the past week.

11 January 2013

By Christian Jarrett

1. There’s More to Life Than Being Happy – by Emily Esfahani Smith for the Atlantic. “Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a ‘taker’ while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a ‘giver’.”

2. The latest issue of the Wellcome Trust’s free Big Picture magazine is devoted to the brain and brain scanning techniques.

3. Psychologists discuss the cocktail party effect – BBC Radio 4.

4. How switching tasks maximises creative thinking.

5. The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz – stories and case studies from 25 years as a London psychoanalyst – was BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week. The book is “already something of a literary sensation“, says the Guardian.

6. The 12 cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational.

7. Psychological insights into human attention from the skills of a pick-pocket – by Adam Green for the New Yorker.

8. The jobs with the most psychopaths.

9. Psychologists discuss disgust – BBC Radio 4.

10. New book that’s definitely worth a look – The World Until Yesterday in which Jared Diamond explores what we can learn from traditional societies. Tom Payne, the Telegraph reviewer, said it left him “riveted and thinking hard“. But Wade Davis for The Guardian was less enthusiastic: “the lessons [Diamond] draws from his sweeping examination of culture are for the most part uninspired and self-evident.”