Learning! Roundup: Selfie Judgement, Optimistic Ageing, How to Have a Meaningful Life, and More!

New research shows that people who take selfies are judged as being total losers, basically.
Photo by Djamal Akhmad Fahmi.

Selfie Judgement

Do you judge people who take a lot of selfies? According to science, you do! People who take a lot of selfies are judged as being less likeable, secure, successful, and open to experiences than those who have photos someone else took of them. So basically, selfie-takers are judged as total losers? Or at least, more loser-like. I suppose that if someone else takes a photo of you, then at the very least it shows you were somewhere with other people, even if it also means you may have interrupted a stranger's nice evening to have them snap the shot.

Optimistic Ageing

A new study shows that people who are optimistic are more likely to live beyond age 85. They were also more likely to be physically active and have advanced education, two things that might help with optimism, except that event controlling for those factors it was found that optimism made a difference all on its own.

How to Have a Meaningful Life

For a time, researchers thought that positive experiences led people to feel they had a meaningful life, however, now it seems as though meaning in life comes from both positive and negative experiences that come at greater extremes. A key factor may be when these intense emotional experiences trigger deep contemplation.

Tiny Robo-Snakes

This is very cool and makes me think of super-creepy dystopian futures: scientists have created a teensy-tiny little snake designed to wriggle through your veins and into your BRAIN. They say it's to treat things like aneurysms, but also maybe to control the minds of dissidents?

Contagious Attitudes

You'd probably like to think that, when you meet someone, you judge them based on your own opinion, not that of the others who interact with them, right? Well, peer pressure is strong, even when it's implicit. A new study shows that we are more likely to like someone and treat them well if we witness them receiving positive nonverbal signals for others. So basically, if we see evidence that other people like someone, we're probably going to like them, and vice versa. This goes a long way to explaining how bullying can follow some kids forever and implicit biases get perpetuated.

Food Waste

The fridge is, apparently, the place where food goes to die. That's because people wind up throwing out about half of the food they buy! Yikes!


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