As a behaviour designer with a background in cell and molecular biology, I explore the science of how we think, act, and adapt.
In this issue:
- Why you should stop saying “good luck”, according to behavioural science
- Venting doesn’t reduce anger—but it might worsen it
- Oxytocin boosts memory and offers hope for addiction treatment
- Kids learn best after watching ‘impossible’ events
- Body cells may contribute to memory-making
In brief
- “Good luck”: Emphasizing luck over effort shifts focus from control to chance.
- Venting fails: Calm activities, not blowing off steam, ease anger.
- Oxytocin’s power: A potential memory booster and addiction cure.
- Kid cognition: Fantastical events aid learning retention if immediately followed by new information.
- Cellular memory: Kidney cells mimicking brain behavior spark new insights.
“Why you should stop saying good luck, according to behavior science”
TL;DR: Emphasising the role of luck over effort can make people feel that their successes and failures are outside their control.
“Saying “good luck” often enough can change the recipient’s perspective on achieving goals. A study published in Personality and Individual Differences found that belief in luck is an adaptive cognitive process, one that could cause someone to see events more as outside of rather than within their control.”
Venting doesn’t reduce anger
TL;DR: Rage rooms, venting, running and other “high arousal” activities don’t reduce anger – in some cases they prolonged or worsen it. Instead focus on getting calm or engaging in soothing activities. Bob Ross videos, anyone?
“The review found that most arousal-boosting activities didn’t reduce anger, and some increased it, with jogging most likely to do that.””
Oxytocin boosts memory, cures addiction
TL;DR: Oxytocin may play a key role in how long term memories are formed and retained, and could help treat dementia. This may explain why many believe that dementia gets worse in lonely people. Other research is finding hope with using oxytocin to treat opioid addiction.
“The team noticed that when they stimulated oxytocin neurons in the paraventricular hypothalamic nucleus (PVN), there was increased activity not only there but also in the supramammillary nucleus (SuM).”
“There’s also a broader social context. Many believe that loneliness and lack of social interaction can worsen dementia symptoms.”
Using oxytocin to treat pain killer addiction makes a lot of sense: studies have already shown that hugs – natural oxytocin – reduces pain by blocking pain signals.
Kids learn best after watching ‘impossible’ events
TLDR: This is one of a few follow up studies from a (much hyped on social media) 2011 study that concluded that fast paced cartoons affected kids cognition (kids took longer to do mental activities within 8 minutes after watching*. One of the questions in the study that the researchers acknowledged was that the “non fast paced cartoon” used in the study was less fantastical. The fast paced cartoon was Spongebob Sqaurpants, in case you’re wondering.
So this new study was set up to test out if degrees of fantasy rather than pacing affected kids cognition. The conclusion was that degrees of fantasy did not inhibit problem solving, but that – surprisingly- watching “impossible” events immediately before learning something educational really helped kids remember the information.
*My own commentary? Ask me a question after I’m done with Spanish conjugation practice and watch me appear to struggle for probably around ten minutes. Perhaps we’re seeing cognitive overload rather than cognitive damage. But it is worth asking if a cartoon should take as much brain power as language learning. There are better options out there.
Body cells may be able to contribute to memory making
Let’s remember that cells in petri dishes don’t always act like cells inside a body, first, ok?
In this study they exposed kidney cells to sequences of chemical signals that mimic how cells are exposed to neurotransmitters and found the kidney cells switched on the same gene that brain cells do when they detect a pattern in information in order to form a memory.
“It suggests that in the future, we will need to treat our body more like the brain—for example, consider what our pancreas remembers about the pattern of our past meals to maintain healthy levels of blood glucose or consider what a cancer cell remembers about the pattern of chemotherapy.”
Am I looking forward to people bringing up ‘the body keeps the score’? No. See here and here for why.
But if the end result is that some type of body cell memory does exist from trauma, at least we’ll have more science backed and evidence supported treatments.
Stay curious!
Howlite & Coffee 
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