Want to Look and Feel Younger?

Imagine rewinding the clock 20 years. How do you feel?  Well if you’re at all like the subjects in a Harvard University research project, you look and feel two decades younger, as though you managed to stop aging and go backward.

Several years back Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer studies a group of elderly men, retrofitting an isolated old New England hotel so that every visible sign said it was 20 years earlier. The men — in their late 70s and early 80s — were told not to reminisce about the past, and actually act as if they had traveled back in time. Her desire was to see if changing the men’s mindset about their age might lead to measurable changes in health and fitness.

Langer’s findings were remarkable:  After just one week, the experimental group had increased joint flexibility and dexterity, and less arthritis in their hands. Their mental acuity had also improved, as did their gait and posture. When shown the men’s photographs, outsiders  judged them to look younger than their actual age. It seemed the they had managed to stop aging, and to some degree actually look and feel younger.

Langer has since been running similar “stop aging” experiments for years, and the accumulated weight of her evidence is convincing. Her theory, argued in her new book, Counterclockwise,  is that we are all victims of our own stereotypes about aging and health.

She says we all just mindlessly accept negative cultural cues about disease and old age, and these cues shape our self-concepts and our behavior. If we can shake loose from the negative clichés that dominate our thinking about health, Langer tells us, we can look and feel far younger than our actual years, and to some degree stop aging.

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How Pretty Women Change Men’s Minds

According to a new scientific study, just talking to an attractive woman can temporarily change a man’s mind power.

The research shows men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function and mind power than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive.

Researchers who carried out the study, published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, think the reason may be that men use up so much of their brain function or cognitive resources trying to impress beautiful women, they have little left for other tasks.

The findings have implications for the mind power and subsequent mental performance of men who are trying to impress a woman in the workplace, or even exam results in mixed-sex schools.

Women, however, were not affected by chatting to a handsome man. This may be simply because men are programmed by evolution to think more about mating opportunities.

Psychologists at Radboud University in The Netherlands carried out the study after one of them was so struck on impressing an attractive woman he had never met before, that he could not remember his address when she asked him where he lived.

Researchers said it was as if he was so keen to impression a woman that he temporarily absorbed most of his cognitive resources.

To see if other men were affected in the same way, they recruited 40 male heterosexual students. Each one performed a standard memory test where they had to observe a stream of letters and say, as fast as possible, if each one was the same as the one before last. The volunteers then spent seven minutes chatting to male or female members of the research team before repeating the test.

The results showed men were slower and less accurate after trying to impress the women.

The more they fancied them, the worse their score. But when the task was repeated with a group of female volunteers, they did not get the same results. Memory scores stayed the same, whether they had chatted to a man or a woman.

In a report on their findings the researchers said: ‘We conclude men’s cognitive functioning may temporarily decline after an interaction with an attractive woman.’

Psychologist Dr George Fieldman, a member of the British Psychological Society, said the findings reflect the fact that men are programmed to think about ways to pass on their genes. “When a man meets a pretty woman, he is what we call ‘reproductively focused,” he explained. “But a woman also looks for signs of other attributes, such as wealth, youth and kindness. Just the look of the man would be unlikely to have the same effect.”

By Pat Hagan / Source: The Telegraph

The Best Predictor of Future Success

Wonder just what it is that best predicts your future success? Passion and perseverance are more important to success than talent or intelligence. But there’s something else that may be the best gauge of your future success.

In a series of studies at the University of Pennsylvania, researchers found that “gritty” people are more likely to achieve success in school, work and other pursuits—perhaps because their passion and commitment help them endure setbacks. In other words, it’s not just talent that matters but also character.

How Much Does Talent Count?
So… if effort is the bedrock of success, what roles do intelligence and talent play? Many large research projects suggest that intelligence accounts for about 25 percent of one’s success. While persistence, or pure grit, accounts for at least 50 percent, and creativity an additional 25 percent.

Neurobiologist Angela Duckworth and positive psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman, known for his groundbreaking work on optimism, interviewed high achievers in various fields to identify their common distinguishing characteristics.

There were a number of people in their study who were brilliant, ambitious and persevering, Duckworth reports. But there were also a lot who were not geniuses, but were really tenacious and could endure setbacks. The researchers began to refer to this tenacity as “grit”—the determination to accomplish an ambitious, long-term goal despite the inevitable obstacles.

And for those who may not be ranked as having a genius IQ, Duckworth and Seligman have an important finding: Grit has value for people at all levels of raw intelligence and ability.

In fact, their initial studies show that grit and intelligence are completely independent traits. Duckworth says regardless of your ability, it’s important to be focused and able to bounce back from setbacks.

The Power of Passion
There is strong evidence that passion fuels persistence. Although extremely persistent people are usually passionate about their work, that doesn’t mean that the passion always comes first.

Perseverance, notes Duckworth, can itself foster passion. Often the most fascinating aspects of an area of interest only become apparent after deep immersion, to a level where you understand it and are enlivened by it.

For others, persistence may grow from a desire to test their limits. Consider endurance athletes, for whom challenge isn’t merely an obstacle to accomplishing something but often the spur to action in the first place.

Also in the Mix
Passion may be the linchpin of grit, but it’s not the only element. Truly gritty people tend to set especially challenging long-term goals. Self-discipline is probably also important, and studies have shown that gritty people tend to be highly self-disciplined.

Then there’s optimism, a trait that Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California at Davis finds is extremely common among high achievers. They just really believe in the end that they’re going to win, and they just keep on pushing, he says.

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