Saturday, March 5, 2011

Science Uncovers the Secret to Making Wise Decisions


(Above: Imagine that.)

It's so much simpler than you ever imagined! Just chug a lot of water (or beverage of your choice).

Dutch scientists say they've proven that people with full bladders tend make wiser decisions. It seems controlling your urge to tinkle helps you control other urges as well. (Hmmm. I guess this makes sense. In my personal experience, desperately needing to locate a bathroom makes you care very little about anything else.)

Not willing to put yourself through that kind of torture? Apparently just THINKING about pee-related words can have the same effect! I expect all of you to try this at home.

More here.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like to read the original papers after the newspaper version. The emphasis is different, and you get to admire some neat, or horrifying, experimental design. I once looked up some Dutch study on coffee and cholesterol in the Journal of Nutrition (yay local medical school library!) and was shocked to see the poor study cohort was asked to drink two liters of over-extracted cheap French Press brewed coffee a day for two weeks -- then had to go "cold turkey" for another two weeks. SHUDDER.

Robert in San Diego

Ari the Awesome said...

Weird! It makes me wonder how they came up with the idea in the first place...

Chloe said...

Hi Kirsten!
I found this article on Yahoo! It looks interesting! Please take a look!:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20110303/us_yblog_upshot/mystery-novel-intrigues-manhattan

Kitty said...

That's the best advice I've heard in awhile...! XD

Rachel said...

Very interesting! Cool idea!

Anonymous said...

Dear Arithe Awesome:
That's another advantage of reading the original papers! They usually give a theoretical reason for the hypothesis they're testing, or a brief precis of the immediately previous papers on the topic.

Robert Leone

Anonymous said...

Robert from San Diego still on the prowl for the original article. Apparently the best I can do right now isn't the article itself, but this press release from the Association for Psychological Science, the folks that publish the journal in which the article will appear.

Toodles*** said...

I'll think of that when I start my homework in a minute and I have to prevent myself from going and reading a book or looking all over the internet for cool stuff (maybe I'll just leave that one to you, Kirsten).

Chloe: That's really cool! Have you read any of them yourself?

Anonymous said...

This is where Annanka Fishbein would come in handy -- if she didn't have direct access to a preprint version of the article, her parents would know whom would be one of the reviewers or referees of the actual paper.

Ari the Awesome said...

Chloe, that's such a cool news story! If I were in New York, I'd berunning through the streets looking for the story to know what's next.

Elizabeth said...

It's true! Haha. And Chloe, that is awesome! Why don't I live in New York? ):

Holy Lucy, Batman! said...

Um ok.....

Holy Lucy, Batman! said...

Oh and this is completely off subject but I play a squirrel puppet in our church's puppet show and the squirrels name? Kiki oh the irony

Anonymous said...

Weird. How'd they come across that???

P.S. when is the next Kiki Strike coming out???

Anonymous said...

Kirsten,
I hate to keep asking but have you submitted Darkness Dwellers to your editor yet? I can't wait! Sorry to be so irksome. Interesting post! I love it! Very clever!
From,
Rachel

MushroomCloud said...

Well, sine I always have to pee, I must make excellent decisions!