Welcome to the Weekly Medius PsychNews. Every week, we select five thought-provoking Psychology articles from hundreds published in journals and other media. Psychology Drives Everything.

Four Core Beliefs That Can Control Your Life:
Core beliefs are the general principles and assumptions that guide you through life. They can be positive: “Most people are good,” or “I can do anything I set my mind to." But they can also be self-limiting, tricking your mind into seeing the world as darker and less full of possibility than it really is. Read through these common harmful core beliefs and make a note of the ones that resonate with you. Full article.

Six Simple Ways to Rest the Mind:
Activities that take attention and demands away from the self can rest and refresh the mind. We use distraction, focus, and just “being” for this purpose automatically, whether we realize it or not. Binge watching a television series, playing a sport or a game of chess, and daydreaming are examples. But life is stressful. Having a few extra coping strategies can help ease that stress and bring a feeling of control back to both body and mind. Here are six options to consider. Full article.

The Hidden Upsides of Growing Older:
It can be all too easy to focus on ways that we don’t feel as mentally agile as we did in our youth. Yet, not all is lost with advancing age. We often take for granted the advantages that coincide with years of experience when handling complex information or rebounding from setbacks. We'd like to focus here on the aspects of mental function that stay strong or even become better with age. We refer to these enhanced mental functions as “hidden upsides,” because we often don’t notice the many ways that our years of life have led to improved mental abilities. Why is it hard to recognize these upsides? First, negative stereotypes about aging and cognitive ability abound in Western culture. Their prevalence makes it easier to notice moments consistent with the stereotype and harder to notice the moments in which older adults flourish (Dionigi, 2015). For example, while adults of all ages misplace their keys and phones, older adults and their family members may be more likely to focus on these memory lapses and to view them as diagnostic of declining memory. Full article.

What We Can Learn From People with High Self-Control:
Self-control refers to the ability to resist impulses and conflicting desires in pursuit of goal-directed behaviors. For instance, a person who intends to lose weight must resist the temptation of eating junk food. The temptation is, therefore, a threat to the person’s sense of self-control. Threats—be they everyday distractions and temptations, or more serious ones like gambling addiction or alcohol abuse—make the pursuit of important goals difficult. Many of us believe we would be more successful if we had more self-control—but why exactly are high self-control people successful? In today’s post, I review an article by Stavrova and colleagues, published in the October issue of European Journal of Social Psychology, which examines potential mechanisms linking self-control and success. Full article.

Can you change your personality?
It has long been believed that people can’t change their personalities, which are largely stable and inherited. But a review of recent research in personality science points to the possibility that personality traits can change through persistent intervention and major life events. Personality traits, identified as neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness, can predict a wide range of important outcomes such as health, happiness and income. Because of this, these traits might represent an important target for policy interventions designed to improve human welfare. Full article.