Research has been done on what gifts people like to receive. It turns out that simple and straight forward is often the best approach.

Social scientists bear glad tidings for the holiday season. After extensively observing how people respond to gifts, they have advice for shoppers: You don’t have to try so hard. You’re not obliged to spend hours finding just the right gift for each person on your list. Most would be just as happy with something quick and easy. This may sound too good to be true, but rest assured this is not a ploy by some lazy Scrooges in academia.

Source: The Perfect Gift? It’s the One They Asked For – The New York Times

Here is interesting research on the growing phenomenon of getting yourself killed while trying to shoot a selfie. Apparently, the goal is to build a kind of this-is-a-dangerous-selfie warning app.

In 2014, 15 people died while taking a selfie; in 2015 this rose to 39, and in 2016 there were 73 deaths in the first eight months of the year. That’s more selfie deaths than deaths due to shark attacks. That raises an interesting question—how are these people dying, and is there a way to prevent these kinds of accidents?

Source: Data Scientists Chart the Tragic Rise of Selfie Deaths

and the research paper can be found at https://lnkd.in/fpdiVwx

Here is another study that explores the relationship between Facebook and emotions.

People’s emotional life improves significantly when they quit Facebook for 1 week… Millions of hours are spent on Facebook each day. We are surely better connected now than ever before, but is this new connectedness doing any good to our well-being? According to the present study, the answer is no…

Source: If You Want to Be Happy, Quit Facebook? – Neuroskeptic

The development of social behaviour has always been fascinating. How and when do children learn to interact with adults and each other? Here is some interesting research.

A new paper in Child Development has explored the … question of when and how young children are able to discern social power from more subtle social dynamics between two parties, finding that already by age three children can interpret various forms of social power – resource control, goal achievement, and permission giving – to identify who’s in charge.

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/11/16/by-age-three-children-are-already-adept-at-figuring-out-whos-boss/

Ever wonder whether your happiness is related to the weather? Feel gloomy when it is raining outside?

This research suggest that it is the number of daylight hours that really matters, not the rain or wind.

This might be quite relevant for those of us who live in places with short winter days.

The one weather variable that really matters to mental health is the amount of sunlight hours, new research finds. Rain, air pollution, wind and high or low temperature have relatively little effect. It is the amount of time between sunrise and sunset that is linked to people’s mental health.

Source: Mental Health Is Only Affected By This One Aspect Of Weather – PsyBlog

Here is an important, and somewhat hard to read, article on the lasting psychological damage from US torture programs.

Before the United States permitted a terrifying way of interrogating prisoners, government lawyers and intelligence officials assured themselves of one crucial outcome. They knew that the methods inflicted on terrorism suspects would be painful, shocking and far beyond what the country had ever accepted. But none of it, they concluded, would cause long lasting psychological harm.

Fifteen years later, it is clear they were wrong.

Source: How U.S. Torture Left a Legacy of Damaged Minds – The New York Times