Personal Growth — December 18, 2011

Just Enough Adversity Breeds Resilience

Research shows that too few or too many adverse experiences generally leave people with worse coping skills than those who have had ‘the optimum’ number of bad times.

bigthinkeditor

What’s the Latest Development?

A meta-analysis of studies of how traumatic events affect mental health found that the number of adverse experiences may determine whether we become better able to handle what life throws at us. Those who underwent no or few hardships, or many adversities, generally had worse coping skills than those who had some bad times, but not too many.

What’s the Big Idea?

Why do those with low to moderate levels of hardships have more resilience to handle major or minor difficulties? Study author Mark Seery of the University at Buffalo in New York thinks there could be various factors at work, including having a sense of mastering past hurdles, feeling in control, building social support networks and stimulating cell growth in areas of the brain that relate to coping.

Photo credit: shutterstock.com

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

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7 min

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with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

Up Next

Weekend Coffee: December 18

In top news this week, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. And in other news: • A paper in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine finds that the […]