IFLScience: Divorce Rates Are Highest After Family Vacations

Overall, the months of March and August consistently saw the highest divorce rates, leading the researchers to suggest that this could be a delayed result of Christmas holidays and summer vacations – times when couples try to "fix" their relationships by taking holidays. They noted it takes two to three months to find attorneys, file the paperwork, arrange finances, and even to mount the courage.

The study by associate professor Julie Brines and doctoral candidate Brian Serafini looked at monthly divorce rates from different counties in Washington. Their findings were recently presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Seattle. [...]

n an attempt to explain this trend, Professor Brines said: "People tend to face the holidays with rising expectations, despite what disappointments they might have had in years past.

"They represent periods in the year when there's the anticipation or the opportunity for a new beginning, a new start, something different, a transition into a new period of life," she added. "It's like an optimism cycle, in a sense. They're very symbolically charged moments in time for the culture."

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Business Insider: The popularity of tiny houses is beginning to have a big impact on the real estate market

Tiny houses are exactly as they’re described: small homes that are often built on a trailer to be portable. The maximum square footage for tiny living varies by the company or individual, but these small dwellings are typically under 500 to 700 square feet. Tiny homes are often designed to meet function first – whether it's a loft bed or composting toilet – and can cost less than $10,000 and up to $100,000, depending on the size, style and functionality of the space.

Interest in tiny homes gained momentum during the recession that began in 2007, as people sought a simpler, less expensive way to live. And as the U.S. pulled itself out of economic crisis, the desire for simple living didn’t wane. [...]

It’s not just a matter of being able to downsize to a trailer’s worth of belongings. Living in such a small space requires a commitment to simplifying your entire lifestyle. Otherwise, Mitchell says you can find yourself going back to a traditional home all too quickly.

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Associated Press: Analysis: Turkey's potentially momentous shift on Assad

The statement Saturday by Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim was nuanced: On one hand, "Assad does not appear to be someone who can bring (Syrians) together" — but on the other, "there may be talks (with Assad) for the transition."

Until now, Syria's neighbor to the north was determined to see him out of power — providing refuge and supply lines for a variety of Syrian rebel groups and turning something of a blind eye to the use of its territory by Islamic State jihadis waging their own fight with Assad as well.

Turkey had several reasons for offering critical support to the rebellion. Though not an Arab state, Turkey is predominantly Sunni, like most of the rebels, and it naturally chafes at the domination of Syria by Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam and part of a regional axis that includes Lebanon's Hezbollah group and Iran. The government of President Recep Teyyip Erdogan is Islamist-rooted while Assad is avowedly secularist. And Turkey is a NATO member which until now has supported the West's efforts to end the repressive authoritarian system in Damascus. [...]

The Syrian Kurds have emerged as the main force fighting the Islamic State group, affording them a great deal of autonomy in their enclave in the north of the country, bordering Turkey. The strengthening of the Syrian Kurds has in turn emboldened Turkey's own minority Kurds; that's a worrying development for Ankara, which has long tried to keep down Kurdish power and ambitions. [...]

Ayham Kamel, a Middle East analyst with the Eurasia Group consultancy, said Turkey's position on Assad is becoming significantly more flexible as Russia plays a more active role, and that the Syrian government's recent and unprecedented bombing of U.S.-backed Kurdish positions sought to show Ankara that Assad is the only serious partner who can guarantee that Syria's Kurds remain contained.

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The Atlantic: Best Friends Build Shared Memory Networks

In science, this is known as a transactive memory system. Transactive memory systems (TMS) are repositories of knowledge that are shared between two or more people. A shared memory of events, like with me and my friends, above, can be part of it, but it’s also a way of calling up facts that other people know. If you say “Oh, what’s the movie that starts with that whistling cartoon rooster?” and I say “Robin Hood,” that’s transactive memory. You have access to my knowledge, and vice versa. But, it only works if we trust each other that we both know what we’re talking about, and that we know we can call on each other for the knowledge if we need it.

These systems have so far been studied in romantic relationships and work groups (coworkers, classmates, groups slapped together in the lab). A new paper published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships looks at transactive memory in the context of best friendships. The researchers asked people to answer questions about their relationship with their best friend—how satisfied and committed they were to the friendship, how long they’d been friends, things like that, as well as questions designed to measure the strength of their TMS, like “I trust that my best friend has credible knowledge.” [...]

There are two different structures of a TMS—differentiated and integrated. In an integrated TMS, friends share similar knowledge and are able to reinforce or remind each other of what they know. In a differentiated TMS, they have knowledge of different things, and can consult each other like encyclopedias. The researchers found that in mixed-gender best friendships, TMSs were more likely to be differentiated, while in same-gender best friendships, they were more likely to be integrated. But regardless of the gender makeup, the systems were equally strong.

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Quartz: Denmark has figured out how to teach kids empathy and make them happier adults

A University of Michigan study of nearly 14,000 college students found that students today have about 40% less empathy than college kids had in the 1980s and 1990s. Michele Borba, an educational psychologist and author of Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our-All-About-Me World, argues that that the rise of narcissism and loss of empathy are key reasons for why nearly a third of college kids are depressed and mental health problems among kids are on the rise.

Denmark, the land of the happiest people in the world (pdf), takes empathy seriously, with an hour of empathy-building each week a required part the national curriculum for all kids aged 6 to 16. [...]

Measuring its effectiveness is difficult. Danes are famously among the happiest people in the world due to everything from high levels of income equality and the generosity of its citizens to each other, though some wonder whether this is because they have very low expectations for happiness. The country’s remarkable social safety net means there are fewer reasons for people to feel unhappy, since they know they have good health care, education, and elder care. Even so, one recent study showed 38% of Danish women and 32% of Danish men received treatment for a mental disorder at some point during their life, higher than global averages and certainly high for such purportedly happy people.

Happiness is a complex concept, so perhaps Klassen Tid‘s “success” is simply recognizing that empathy is a skill and not an inherent trait. Kids need to practice it the same way they work at math or soccer.

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