Your Weekend Hangover

Fewer links this week, but with more commentary. 

How to immunize yourself from rejection before a date: By mentally reviewing your best qualities (e.g. I’m a good listener, I’m funny, I’m sexy, I play a mean jazz flute) a few times before a date you will have higher self-esteem, more emotional resilience, and less sensitivity to rejection. But if you really want to play it safe, stay at home and get a cat.

Taking another look at if in fact, dogs are people too. If it walks like a dog, barks like a dog, and looks like a dog, it must be a person.

Five Things Successful People Do Before 8am: I do 4ish of these things before 8am. I’ve never really gotten into visualization. Henry Ford once said, “Vision without execution is just hallucination.”

Love hurts, physically:  Looking at images of a former girlfriend or boyfriend that broke up with you caused activation in the same areas of the brain physical pain does. Next time you’re going through a break up, take an aspirin. I’ll help both your heart disease and heartache.

Six Reasons to Hire an Athlete: 1. Drive and resilience. 2. Goal orientation. 3. Learning Orientation. 4. Entrepreneurship. 5. Good balance. 6. Teamwork.

Study: Females lose self-confidence throughout college:. I haven’t read the study itself so I can’t attest to the methods or conclusions. It looks as if it replicated research with the same results published in the 1980s though.

Please Twitter, Just Stay Weird: How the IPO may change the social network.

How and Why to Track Your Sleep: The 7 keys to good sleep hygiene include: 1.  A consistent bedtime and wake time.  2. Keeping your bedroom dark and cool. 3. Avoiding alcohol, tobacco, heavy meals and exercise within three hours of bedtime. 4. Avoiding caffeine after 2:00pm. 5. Avoid naps after 2:00pm. 6. Turn off turn off electronics (unless you’re using it to track your sleep). 7. Your bed should ONLY be for sleep and doing the no pants dance. If you’re not involved in one of those activities, get out of bed.

15 Rules for Good Relationships: My favorites include making an effort to initiate sex more, making rules about technology, avoiding criticism, and following through on everything you say you’ll do.

The New Face of Risky Drinking Is Female: Female college student are more likely to binge drink than males, women with a university degree are almost twice as likely to drink on a daily basis as those without, and 16% of college students said they have restricted their caloric intake to reserve the calories for drinking.

The Scientific Way To Mend A Broken Heart

 The Scientific Way To Mend A Broken Heart:

If you’ve ever experienced heartbreak, then you know that emotional pain can be so severe it resembles physical pain. That is because the human brain process emotional and physical pain in similar ways and in the same place since fMRI studies indicate that emotional and physical pain both activate the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex. Other research confirms that people who suffer from physical conditions such as chronic pain are also more likely to have emotional anxiety and feel social rejection more deeply. Furthermore over the counter pain killers have been shown to reduce emotional pain as well as physical pain. Other ways to reduce emotional pain include spending time with loved ones (including pets), participating in activities you like even if you don’t feel like it, forcing yourself to smile, and talking about the situation with others.

What You Should Do On Your Lunch Break:

16 Things You Should Do On Your Lunch Break Today: Some I/O Psych Research:

Forbes has 16 recommendations for what you should be doing on your lunch break. Some of them are quite good. I like the suggestions of exercising, decompressing, making a plan, eating, socializing, and networking. The reason I like them is because they are supported by some research from I/O Psychology on the effects of different types of “breaks” when at work.

A 2008 study investigated the hypothesis that while breaks at work are designed to help employees recover so they can be productive and avoid burnout throughout the day, some breaks further deplete a worker's cognitive resources depending on what the employee does during their break. Essentially the premise is that you want to do low effort (restful) activities like socializing or relaxing, and avoid high effort activities (chores) like working thorough the break or running errands. The research showed that employees who relaxed during their breaks were happier, less irritable, and smiled more after the break than people who did chores. Beyond that, people who did chores during their break demonstrated an increase in negative emotions. The takeaway here is that if you actually rest during your break, you’ll have more positive emotions and be better suited to take on challenges the rest of the day, whereas doing chores during your break engenders negative emotions and further diminishes your ability to be effective for the rest of the day. Think about that as you plan your afternoon lunch and breaks, but be sure not to think too hard. 

Citation: Trougakos, J. P., Beal, D. J., Green, S. G., & Weiss, H. M. (2008). Making the break count: An episodic examination of recovery activities, emotional experiences, and positive affective displays. Academy of Management Journal, 51(1), 131-146.

Why Fans of Bad Teams Are More Likely To Be Obese:

When teams lose, their fans eat fattier foods: Maybe this is why the Patriots’ fans are so good looking. Since the Patriots have only lost an average of 3.8 games/season since 2001 we don’t experience the drain of cognitive resources a loss causes and indulge in less healthy foods, like say a fan of the Cleveland browns, who average 10.3 losses/season in that same time span may. A team’s losses have also been linked to alcohol related crimes, domestic violence, and heart attacks for their fans. Victories seem to have the opposite effect on fans, boosting egos and enhancing the ability to delay gratification and resist temptation. I know that when the Patriots lose, I fall into a dark depression where I can’t watch ESPN or tolerate Jets fans. The emotional distress and lack of cognitive resources brought on by a loss make me irritable and less able to moderate my behavior. I may be an extreme case, but for the sake of Ohio, let’s hope this is the year the Browns figure it out.

Managing your emotions in the aftermath of a shooting:

Managing your emotions in the aftermath of a shooting: Given today’s events, this post from the American Psychology Association is worth reviewing. You may wonder how these atrocities can happen, or feel helpless to stop them from occurring. It is typical for people to experience a wide range of emotions after an event like this. Even just hearing or reading about it can prompt shock, anger, sadness, fear, and a plethora of other emotions. The APA has several suggestions to help process and deal with the distress. I suggest reading the seven bulleted suggestions in the article.