Psychology Around the Net: January 14, 2017

Happy Saturday, sweet readers!

Did everyone make it through yesterday relatively unscathed?

I ran into an interesting article regarding Friday the 13th and the cultural- and psychological-based reasons for superstition. Even if you don’t pay attention to superstitions and didn’t even know yesterday was the dreaded Friday the 13th, Why Do We Fear Friday the 13th? is an interesting look at how we react to things we can’t control, as well as how we try to control them.

Moving on, this week we have information on a new social media-based mental health campaign called the “Inside Out Challenge,” tips for taking an effective mental health day from work, how playfulness helps adults with a variety of mental activities, and more.

This Makeup Artist Is Challenging People to Wear Their Mental Illnesses: Have you heard of the Inside Out Challenge? It’s a social media-based campaign started by beauty blogger Yasaman Gheidi that challenges people to create and share a visual representation of the two different versions of themselves — the public version, which often is designed to hide what’s going on inside, and the private version — and it’s catching on. What do you think? Check out Gheidi’s own transformation at The “Inside Out Challenge” — Pt.1.

Should You Take Mental Health Days To Manage Work Stress? Have you ever felt like you needed to take a “mental health day” from work, but struggled with the guilt that came with possibly disrupting your co-workers and clients? Evan Thompson works to help business development in various areas such as workplace culture is an advocate of the occasional mental health day and provides six tips on how to schedule, plan, and get the most out of your mental health days — as well as what you can do every day to avoid needing more.

Founders Roundtable: This Is What Mental Health Looks Like at Colleges Across America: The MTV Founders theme for January is “Moving Forward,” and this week their MTV Campus Ambassadors discussed ways to move forward in terms of mental health by discussing what their colleges offer, what they can improve upon, advice for freshmen looking for support, and more.

Psychology: Playful People Are at an Advantage: According to psychologists from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), adults can use playfulness to their advantage in various life situations including making observations, studying different perspectives, and turning something monotonous into interesting; however, these psychologists say we shouldn’t equate “playfulness” with “humor” and that we need new vocabulary to describe it.

The 10 Surprising Personality Traits of Highly Intelligent People: From last week’s edition, we already know about how being a person who swears might mean you’re also a person who’s honest, but now let’s see what swearing, being a night owl, and worrying say about your intelligence level.

Five Ways Museums Can Increase Empathy in the World: Empathy is a person’s inherent ability to understand and share another person’s thoughts and feelings. When we recognize empathy for others, we’re more likely to act in ways that show compassion and selflessness. Says Dr. Elif M. Gokcigdem, “Although empathy is a vital element of our nature, our civilization has not created the essential spaces, practices, and supporting ecosystems where it can be intentionally nurtured and unleashed towards the greater good.” Her remedy for this? Turn to museums.

from World of Psychology http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/01/14/psychology-around-the-net-january-14-2017/