Link Feast
Our editor’s pick of this week’s ten best psychology and neuroscience links.
12 September 2015
The Geel Question
For centuries, a little Belgian town has treated the mentally ill. Why are its medieval methods so successful? Mike Jay investigates for The Psychologist.
Multi-tasking: How To Survive in the 21st Century
Modern life now forces us to do a multitude of things at once — but can we? Should we? asks Tim Harford at The Financial Times.
Ignore Your Feelings
Olga Khazan at The Atlantic reports on a profanity-filled new self-help book that argues life is kind of terrible, so you should value your actions over your emotions.
Your Opinion of You
A brief history of personality tests—and how they lend themselves to cultish misdirection, by Evan Kindley for The Pacific Standard.
What’s The Point of Efficiency If You’re in a Rush to Finish Something Trivial?
The growing use of games to motivate people to accomplish the meaningless is putting our ability to just ‘be’ at risk, writes Oliver Burkeman at The Guardian.
The Narcissist in Chief
“The [Donald] Trump phenomenon raises the question of what kinds of leaders narcissists make,” write By Scott Lilienfeld and Ashley Watts in a New York Times Op-ed. “Fortunately, a recent body of research has suggested some answers.”
Does Soccer Have a Brain-Trauma Problem?
I reported on some new troubling evidence for New York’s Science of Us.
Reducing Temptations by Setting Better Goals
At the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Marina Milyavskaya describes her new research that shows there’s an important difference between “want-to” goals and “have-to” goals.
Lying for Science
Psychologists used to manipulate and deceive their subjects with impunity. Did the end justify the means? asks Antonio Melechi for Aeon.
And Finally …. It’s The Start of ‘Madness Season’ at The Welsh National Opera (WNO)
I puritani, Orlando and Sweeney Todd are all opening in the coming weeks. Stories from different times and different ages but all showcase the same power of human emotion and expose the fragility of the human mind. WNO dares you to join us on our journey to explore human turmoil.