My new favourite blog

Barking up the wrong tree blog just asks really cool questions and then presents evidence toward an answer. Simple as that. Also, the answers usually have some research paper backing, so there's at least some credibility to them, theoretically.

For example:

How important is physical attractiveness to a happy marriage?

Physical appearance plays a crucial role in shaping new relationships, but does it continue to affect established relationships, such as marriage? In the current study, the authors examined how observer ratings of each spouse's facial attractiveness and the difference between those ratings were associated with (a) observations of social support behavior and (b) reports of marital satisfaction. In contrast to the robust and almost universally positive effects of levels of attractiveness on new relationships, the only association between levels of attractiveness and the outcomes of these marriages was that attractive husbands were less satisfied. Further, in contrast to the importance of matched attractiveness to new relationships, similarity in attractiveness was unrelated to spouses' satisfaction and behavior. Instead, the relative difference between partners' levels of attractiveness appeared to be most important in predicting marital behavior, such that both spouses behaved more positively in relationships in which wives were more attractive than their husbands, but they behaved more negatively in relationships in which husbands were more attractive than their wives. These results highlight the importance of dyadic examinations of the effects of spouses' qualities on their marriages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Source: Beyond initial attraction: Physical attractiveness in newlywed marriage. By McNulty, James K.; Neff, Lisa A.; Karney, Benjamin R. Journal of Family Psychology. Vol 22(1), Feb 2008, 135-143.

Here are other good recent ones:

Yes, even Grandma had premarital sex:

Does feeling like a victim make you selfish?

Can living like you're young prevent aging?

How to make good experiences even more pleasurable (and bad ones even worse)? Hint? Interruption... just stop for a second and think. Refocusing on the task at hand really does the trick!

A silly trick I use all the time to remember the moment forever in and out of the moment. Thoughts, feelings, things left unsaid.