Mindfully Healing

People prefer it when your name matches your face. People have a preference for names and faces that go together, new research finds. Names that have a round sound, that require rounding of the mouth, like “Lou”, go better with round faces. Angular sounding names, like “Peter”, though, go better with more angular faces. The psychologists tested this by having people look at pairs of names and faces. Sometimes the names matched the face (round name, round face) and sometimes not (round name, angular face). They found that people prefer

This positive personality trait linked to more suicidal thoughts and suicide itself. People who have a tendency towards perfectionism are at a much higher risk of suicidal thoughts and suicide itself, new research finds. Perfectionists find it harder than others to deal with a world that is fundamentally flawed. Perfectionism involves being highly self-critical, constantly striving to meet the standards of others (typically parents or mentors) and being unsure about the efficacy of one’s own actions. While a certain amount of perfectionism is adaptive and necessary, when it becomes an

Have you ever fallen foul of the grammar police? Introverts are more likely to judge a person negatively on the basis of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, a new study finds. People who are sensitive to grammatical errors are also more likely to be less agreeable by nature. Extroverted people, though, are more likely to ignore written errors. Professor Julie Boland, one of the study’s authors, said: “This is the first study to show that the personality traits of listeners/readers have an effect on the interpretation of language. In this

Slows and can even reverse age-related physical and mental decline. Dancing keeps your brain young, new research finds. Compared with exercise like cycling and Nordic walking, dancing has more profound effects. Dr Kathrin Rehfeld, lead author of the study, said: “Exercise has the beneficial effect of slowing down or even counteracting age-related decline in mental and physical capacity. In this study, we show that two different types of physical exercise (dancing and endurance training) both increase the area of the brain that declines with age. In comparison, it was only