Theres an emotional experience that I hear about and have personally experienced in relation to procrastination. It is the truly overwhelming feeling of negative emotions that we can experience just as we begin a «dreaded» task. I say negative emotions in the general sense, because there is such a mixture of emotions in the turbulent wave of emotions that people describe – fear, anxiety, frustration, guilt, shame, anger. One thing is common across these emotional experiences, we want to get away from these emotions as quickly as possible.

sigue leyendo Procrastination: Feeling overwhelmed, helpless and ready to run away | Psychology Today.

To illustrate what a growing number of literary scholars consider the most exciting area of new research, Lisa Zunshine, a professor of English at Kentucky University, refers to an episode from the TV series “Friends.”

(Follow closely now; this is about the science of English.) Phoebe and Rachel plot to play a joke on Monica and Chandler after they learn the two are secretly dating. The couple discover the prank and try to turn the tables, but Phoebe realizes this turnabout and once again tries to outwit them.

As Phoebe tells Rachel, “They don’t know that we know they know we know.”

This layered process of figuring out what someone else is thinking — of mind reading — is both a common literary device and an essential survival skill. Why human beings are equipped with this capacity and what particular brain functions enable them to do it are questions that have occupied primarily cognitive psychologists.

vía Next Big Thing – Literary Scholars Turn to Science – NYTimes.com.