This strategy works because while you are not denying yourself pleasure, you are also not giving in to the temptation now. You simply say to yourself: I can have this later. We distance ourselves from the temptation and, as our research shows, this actually decreases the desire for the item over time.

At the time of peak desire (i.e., when the temptation is right in front of you), postponing consumption reduces the motivational conflict between give-in and give-up (vice versus virtue). This allows the desire for the temptation to diminish naturally, which enables the person to forgo consumption. Thus, postponement is a “cooling-off” strategy. In the relatively long-term (i.e., a week later), people can continue to forgo the temptation because they continue to desire it less and less.

Importantly, we have shown that postponement must be nonspecific. Don’t say “I’ll have that cake tomorrow or after dinner.” Simply say “I can have the cake later.”

Vanessa Patrick is a professor of marketing at the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston and Nicole Mead is a professor in the Católica-Lisbon School of Business and Economics.

Kevin Rounding and I investigated the causal link between religious concepts and self-control. An interesting finding was that after subtle reminders of religious ideas, self-control appeared to have been replenished after it was diminished experimentally. That is, after performing a task that drained self-control, participants who received religious primes showed high levels of persistence in the subsequent task—they persisted with the impossible puzzles just as long as participants who had not completed the first self-control depleting task.

The psychological explanation for the replenishing effects of religious concepts on self-control, however, is currently unclear. One possibility is that religion, in many cultures, involves notions of a God who is often viewed as an omnipotent moral police who sees all, knows all, and punishes those who fall short of moral standards. Thus, it makes sense that priming people with religious concepts can bring forth the ideas of a punitive God, hence making them more resilient in the face of temptations. Some evidence has been found recently in support of this claim.

Nevertheless, ideas associated with a moralizing God are by no means the only psychological mechanism that stands between religion and self-control. As suggested by theorists, religion is a multi-dimensional construct—costly rituals, shared faith, doctrines, community, to name a few. Each of these dimensions may affect self-control in their own way. More research is required to systematically unpack and examine these components of religion.

Albert Lee is a doctoral student in psychology at Queen’s University.

Lab studies seek out the most scientifically precise procedures, so usually they select a task that has no personal relevance or meaning that can complicate the scientific interpretation of findings. For example, we might assign right-handed people to use their left hands for routine tasks, such as brushing teeth and opening doors. Outside the lab, it makes more sense to use something that will produce genuine benefits. Starting small is best. Make a simple, positive change in your life, something on the order of making your bed every day, or ceasing to say curse words. After a week or two, pick another one.

Roy Baumeister is a professor of psychology at Florida State University.

My colleagues and I have investigated the power that strangers can have over an individual’s sense of social connection, specifically the benefits of being acknowledged by a passerby and the threat of being looked at as if the individual didn’t exist. We conducted a field experiment and found that individuals who were acknowledged by a passerby (our trained research assistant) felt less social disconnection than individuals who were “looked at as though air” (the passerby looked past them instead of giving them eye contact). This field study supports data we collected in another study where participants completed diary entries every time they felt ostracized in their daily life. These participants indicated they often felt ostracized when strangers ignored them on the bus or when walking down the street, and some participants indicated they felt this way at least once a day!

Taken together, this body of research suggests that we can have both a negative and positive influence on others’ feelings of social connection. How we choose to exercise that influence is up to each of us individually.

Eric Wesselmann is a continuing lecturer in psychological sciences at Purdue University.

On the other hand, during a non-optimal time of day (morning for the night owls and evening for the morning larks), people are much less focused and cannot concentrate on one thing as easily. This state of mind leads people to be more susceptible to think about other, seemingly unrelated, information (e.g., things they experienced earlier, their to-do list). This additional information floating around in your mind during your non-optimal time of day then ultimately helps you reach that creative “aha!” moment. So it isn’t really being tired per se that leads to more creative solutions, but having a less focused mind does.

Mareike Wieth is a professor of psychological science at Albion College.

The evidence from studies in cognitive science seems to indicate that intuitive cognitions can change over time, but they are highly resistant to change, and the factors leading to change are not clearly identified. It seems that, over time, individuals who have developed very specialized knowledge can actively suppress their initial gut feelings.

There also seems to be evidence for an internal cognitive “reward” system when operating on intuitive cognitions that lead to positive outcomes within the context of affinity groups. So, if a person is among people they highly respect or whose views are highly valued, intuitive cognitions will tend to conform to views or outcomes that are affirmed by that affinity group.

David Haury is a professor of science education at The Ohio State University.

Environmental cues are likely to have the most influence in situations where attitudes are ambiguous or are being newly formed. For example, most people enter a polling place with a firm decision for whom they wish to cast their vote for president. Many ballots, however, ask citizens to vote on a variety of issues at once, many of which they may be unfamiliar with, or may have weak attitudes about. The context in which those votes are cast is most likely to have an influence on these types of issues.

Jordan LaBouff is a CLAS-Honors Preceptor of Psychology at the University of Maine.

For the past, our difficulty empathizing with the power of embarrassment contributes to regret because we don’t understand, retrospectively, why we “chickened out.” For the future, our difficulty empathizing with the power of embarrassment causes us to enter into situations we’d rather not (e.g., agreeing to sing karaoke and then dreading the event) and causes us to change our minds (chicken out) at the last minute—setting us up for future regret when we can no longer understand why we failed to act.

Leaf Van Boven is a professor of psychology and neuroscience and director of the Emotion, Judgment, Decision, and Intuition lab at the University of Colorado Boulder.

First, gossip gets a bad rap. Much of what we call gossip is driven by a sincere desire to help others. We find, in a series of experiments, that the more generous and moral among us are most likely to pass on rumors about untrustworthy people, and they report doing so because they are concerned about the well-being others. In addition, we find that a category of rumor that we call “prosocial gossip” has positive effects for groups. When people pass on information about others who are selfish and untrustworthy, it warns others to avoid these people. As a result, overall rates of exploitation can be controlled in the group.

Taken together, we find that much gossip has both positive effects and moral motivations. So that’s the first thing—the idea that gossip can be quite virtuous.

Second, we found that gossip alleviates the negative emotions that we feel when we find that someone has behaved in an antisocial way. In our experiments, we find that people tend to experience frustration and show an increased heart rate when they find out that someone has behaved in a deviant way. But engaging in gossip, warning another about this person, can temper their frustration and elevated heart rate. So in this way, gossiping can make you feel better; you might even say it’s therapeutic.

Whether people should gossip more in light of this research depends on what kind of gossip it is. Obviously, rumors that are inaccurate, degrading, or maliciously motivated are socially harmful. However, gossip that is based on reliable information that serves to warn people about who can and cannot be trusted is good. It serves to promote cooperation and maintain social order.

Robb Willer is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Their status has been acknowledged by the country’s head of state: In his inaugural address, President Obama included people of “no faith” in his list of the kinds of Americans there are religiously. The term used by sociologists to identify those who say they have no religion—“Nones”—is now being used in common discourse. And finally, religious identity itself is increasingly regarded not as something ascribed in children and retained unless affirmatively altered, but as a description of someone’s current religious behavior. One-third of Americans have always been pretty indifferent to religion, but those people are now less likely to describe themselves as belonging to a particular faith tradition and more likely to say that they don’t belong to one—and don’t care much.

Mark Silk is a professor of religion in public life and director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, and he blogs at Spiritual Politics.