Jeanette Bicknell

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    Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness—But Time Just Might Do It

    A city’s pace of life was indeed “significantly related” to the physical, social, and psychological well-being of its inhabitants.Photograph by Neta Bartal / Flickr While on vacation in distant locales, people often find that time moves quite differently than in the places they’re used to. In the tropics, we settle into the grooves of “island […]

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    The Loophole in the Hedonic Treadmill

    When Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, in The House of the Dead, that “Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything,” he was talking about the cruelties and deprivations of life in Siberian prison camp. But the human tendency to adapt or “get accustomed” to situations is more profound than even Dostoyevsky may have realized.Imagine […]

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    How to Learn to Love to Practice

     In interviews, famous people often say that the key to becoming both happy and successful is to “do what you love.” But mastering a skill, even one that you deeply love, requires a huge amount of drudgery. Any challenging activity—from computer programming to playing a musical instrument to athletics—requires focused and concentrated practice. A perfect […]

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    How to Negotiate Like—or Against—a Pirate

    The full annual economic cost of naval piracy globally is estimated to be about $1.5 billion.

  • Hong Kong at night

    Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness, But Time Just Might Do It

    While on vacation in distant locales, people often find that time moves quite differently than in the places they’re used to. In the tropics, we settle into the grooves of “island time” and relax thanks to a more leisurely rhythm. A trip to a big city can leave us exhilarated but also drained by the […]

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    Not-So-Sweet Home: The Persistence of Domestic Violence

    Zurijeta via Shutterstock The home is in many ways the basic unity of society, a bastion of shelter and family bonds. It is the means by which the social order is reproduced and the context in which children are brought into the world. Yet for millions of women, children, and men, all over the world, home […]

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    For Billions of People, “Wasting Time” Makes Little Sense

    Monks relaxing in Sikkim, Indiaflowcomm via Flickr Robert Levine, a social psychologist at California State University, Fresno, will always remember a conversation he had with an exchange student from Burkina Faso, in Western Africa. Levine had complained to the student that he’d wasted the morning “yakking in a café” instead of doing his work. Nautilus […]

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    Misdeeds & Disease: How Similar Are Disgust & Moral Disgust?

    Feliciano Guimaraes via Flickr The news earlier this fall that chemical weapons had been used in Syria’s civil was seen as a new low in that conflict. Many people condemned their use as “disgusting”; President Obama, making the case for a military response, said the images from the attack were “sickening.” Nautilus Members enjoy an […]

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    What’s the Sound of Personhood?

    Opening locked minds with music.