hotmedfax2018

Let's face it.  Life is always easier when you have a smooth ending to things.  A good-bye party when you leave a job.  In the old days, exchanging telephone numbers when you parted at school.  A tweet to break up a relationship. Anyway, a new study has found that life's transitions are easier with a sense of a "well-rounded ending," according to newswise.com. The web site notes that w e are more likely to have positive feelings about transitioning from one stage of life to the next if we have an ending marked by a sense of closure —says a team of psychology researchers. “Starting a new life phase in a positive and constructive way is often challenging, so we examined methods that could help people find a good start to a new job, a new relationship, or a new home,” explains Gabriele Oettingen, a professor in New York University’s Department of Psychology and the senior author of the study, at  the web site . “We observed that  how  people end ...

I knew it was probably a risky thing to do.  But I hadn't been paid, and kept getting the runaround, so when I went over my boss's head, and his boss told me he'd look into it the following week, what I'd been hearing all along, I kind of went a little nuts and said, "Please don't take this the wrong way but I feel like I'm getting the runaround again." And, poof!  They fired me. So how do we talk ourselves into rationalizing bad choices ? I had every right to get paid.  But most likely I should have known the guy had a thin skin and I should have been more careful.  Even my son, 16 at the time, told me I should have not done it. "When a reward is tempting enough, people will break their own moral codes to gain the desired prize," says newswise.com. "Afterward, they’ll tell you exactly how they were justified: 'It wasn’t as if anyone was harmed,' “I was only borrowing …,” 'My boss told me too,' or 'It’s our ...

Did you know that there's only a small difference between cooperation and egotism , or extortion ? According to a new study, a strategy has been developed that alternates between cooperation and egotism, newswise.com reports.  And apparently it is difficult for us to resist. "The extortion strategy is especially effective when there is strong competitive pressure - that is if there can be only one winner," the web site explains. "Extortioners often come across as friendly colleagues. They reciprocate friendliness with friendliness, making their competitors feel as though it must be a misunderstanding, if they are taken advantage of again and again. They are forced to play along to avoid loosing even more. This seemingly friendly yet extremely tough exploitation strategy is rewarded with additional gain," points out Manfred Milinski from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Ploen.  Together with Lutz Becks at the University of Konstanz, he...

Who hasn't tried to lose weight?  Or quit smoking?  Or tried to give up just about anything they don't really want to? Self-control , we tell ourselves.  But now a new study says that it involves more than willpower , according to newswise.com. "Temptations are arguably more readily available, more creatively engineered, and cheaper than any time in history," the web site quotes  Angela Duckworth, a University of Pennsylvania psychology professor and one of the report's authors.  "Junk food gets tastier and cheaper every year. And then there's video games, social media, the list goes on. In parallel, there are public policy issues such as obesity, educational underachievement, and under-saving that result, in part, from failures of self-control." A Weight Watchers coach I know well says forget about willpower when trying to lose weight. He's devised strategies to keep himself from over-eating, like eating a whole pizza one day a week, then ...

You've  been keeping a secret from your partner.  You've been demoted at work.  You have another secret.  You've been cheating on her. Guess which secret makes you feel worse?  Believe it or no, that you've been demoted.  That's because a new study has found that secrets we feel ashamed about bother us more than secrets we just feel guilty about. Newswise.com reports, " People who feel shame about a secret, as opposed to guilt, are more likely to be consumed by thoughts of what they are hiding, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.   “Almost everyone keeps secrets, and they may be harmful to our well-being, our relationships and our health,” the web site quotes Michael L. Slepian, PhD, of Columbia University and lead author of the study. “How secrecy brings such harm, however, is highly understudied.”   Slepian and his colleagues surveyed 1,000 participants asking a series of questions abo...

Now this won't come as a surprise to too many of us.  But did you know that workplace sexism affects women's mental health and job satisfaction , according to newswise.com? In a study of 190 women from a large Australian trade union that represented mainly male-dominated jobs , "organizational sexism and interpersonal sexism were associated with a poorer sense of belonging in the industry, which was associated with poorer mental health," the web site reports. "A poorer sense of belonging also explained the negative effect of organizational sexism on job satisfaction." Workplace sexism can reduce a sense of belonging "because it represents a form of bullying, rejection, and ostracism by men against their female co-workers," newswise adds. This reduced sense of belonging then can have a negative effect on women's mental health and job satisfaction due to its association with feelings of loneliness and alienation. "Strategies that in...

OK.  So we've blamed video games for violence (even murder).  Kids tuning out.  Marriages crumbling. But wait.  Did you know they can do good things, too? A new study says so.  According to newswise.com, collaborative video games could increase office productivity . Say what? "A new study by four BYU information systems professors found newly-formed work teams experienced a 20 percent increase in productivity on subsequent tasks after playing video games together for just 45 minutes. The study, published in  AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction , adds to a growing body of literature finding positive outcomes of team video gaming," the web site reports. "To see that big of a jump -- especially for the amount of time they played -- was a little shocking," says co-author and BYU associate professor Greg Anderson. "Companies are spending thousands and thousands of dollars on team-building activities, and I'm thinking, go buy an Xbox....

Now here's a shocker.  A new study says making an accusation at work makes you more trustworthy , according to newswise.com. The web site explains that "m aking an accusation about unethical business practices undermines trust in t he accused and enhances trust in the accuser, but only if the accusation is made in good faith, according to new research led by   Jessica Kennedy , assistant professor of management at the Owen Graduate School of Management." Accusations are common in the workplace, but up until now, there has not been much research on the consequences for making one, she notes. “When we started this paper, we thought that people who call out unethical behavior and groups tend to be viewed negatively by others. If you look at the portrayals of whistleblowers in the media, those are the most salient examples. But we thought that there might actually be some benefits to upholding ethical norms in groups and we wanted to explore what those benefits were.” ...