NOTE TO SELFWORK AND VOCATION

Are you saying ‘thank you’ too effusively?

A group of office workers turned to face a colleague, clapping and smiling, in a modern meeting room setting.

I was taken aback a few years ago when an article went viral admonishing its readers for sending so many ‘thank you’ emails – we’re all struggling with overflowing inboxes, it claimed, and insisting on replying ‘thank you’ all the time, while polite, just adds to the collective burden. Guilty as charged, I thought at the time.

According to a recent paper, there’s another reason to go easy on your gratitude. In the words of the research team led by Kristin Laurin at the University of British Columbia, saying ‘thank you’ too intensely could have ‘potential negative consequences’ for your ‘impression-management goals’. In short, it could make you seem like less of a boss.

The researchers came to their conclusion after presenting hundreds of participants with examples of exchanges between a helper and a thanker. Some of these were fictional vignettes, others were real-life workplace exchanges. Gratitude expressions ranged from the to-the-point ‘Thanks’ to the much more effusive ‘Thank you so much for taking your time to do this for me. I’m incredibly grateful. You have no idea how much I appreciate it. Thank you again.’

Participants rated more effusive thankers as being lower in status and lower in power (that is, having less control over resources and decision-making), relative to helpers. In the real-world examples, this was specifically the case when the message of thanks dominated, rather than being embedded in a longer message.

Expressing gratitude has many benefits – it helps us all get along, among other things – but Laurin and her team said their work shows being too effusive could have unintended consequences. If you’re an agreeable person but you also have ambitions for getting ahead, it might be worth pausing before expressing your next thankful message.

by Christian Jarrett

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An analysis by the energy company Ovo claimed that ‘thank you’ emails are bad for the environment and that if British adults each sent one fewer of these emails each day, we would save more than 16,433 tonnes of carbon a year.

For another nuanced take on gratitude, check out the Psyche Idea ‘True Gratitude is a Communal Emotion, Not a Wellness Practice’ (2020) by Michal Zechariah.


NOTE TO SELFTRAVEL

Why ‘false authenticity’ is so unsettling

Aerial photo of Würzburg, a European cityscape with historic buildings, church spires and a clock tower under a partly cloudy sky.

The past is vividly alive in the Old Town of Würzburg in Germany. Walking the spindly streets, I felt transported to the medieval days: I could practically see the ruddy burghers going about their business in the shadows of aged church facades.

Often when we engage with things of the past, with the material lives of our forebears, we’re in search of a sense of authenticity. Seeing the actual items that people, long dead, dealt with in their day-to-day lives seems in some way to bring them back: what they’ve left behind invigorates our historical imagination of what their lives were like. The things that populated the lives of expired generations gives us a visceral connection to them, and Würzburg amply provides the material for that sense of intimacy with the vanished past.

Historic photo of a European city with a stone bridge, people walking, and buildings with spires in the background.

Würzburg c1900. Courtesy the Library of Congress

Or so I thought. The same day I so romantically strolled through the Old Town, I learned that it’s not old at all – younger, in fact, than me. The Allies bombed the place to annihilation, destroying 90 per cent of the city (more than Dresden). After the war, the Würzburgers rebuilt the Old Town exactly as it had been, a project not completed until the 1990s. So while it seems that you’re engaging with the world of yesteryear, in fact it’s a reproduction.

And that shattered the connection to the past. But why? Walter Benjamin called the uniqueness of a work of art its aura. An identical poster of The Scream (1893), even if arranged the same way as the original, will resonate far less if the viewer knows that Edvard Munch’s brush never touched it. Its aura is gone. So, upon learning of its recency, the aura of Würzburg’s Old Town dissolved – and I was left instead with a sense of falsity, nothing but an unsettling replica of authenticity.

by Sam Dresser

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Stimulating reflections upon similar lines were recently offered by Elizabeth Kostina in her incisive Aeon essay ‘The Replica and the Original’ (2025).

On the perennially intriguing topic of art and authenticity, check out another Aeon essay, ‘Is it Really a Leonardo?’ (2018) by Noah Charney.

To learn why ‘Place authenticity is an important, overlooked part of life’, read this 2024 Psyche Idea by Ashley Krause.


NOTE TO SELFHAPPINESS

Where are you on the ‘happiness curve’?

An elderly man seated on a city street as skateboarders perform tricks around him.

As I approached my 40th birthday, I came across a chart that would – without exaggeration – alter my life’s course. Known as the U-shaped ‘happiness curve’, it plots life satisfaction across adulthood. It suggests that people are, on average, happiest in their 20s, and in old age. The bit that bothered me was the middle: according to the chart, my 40s promised to be my glummest decade.

Shortly after I saw this graph, I made some major life changes – determined to buck the averages. I took a career break, lived abroad for a year, refocused my attention on family, and decided to write a book. Generally, I think it worked: I’m about to turn 45, and now feel pretty content.

So imagine my surprise to learn recently that the chart is more debated than I assumed. While the evidence (600+ papers, apparently) supports the U-shape, its applicability to you or me, well… it depends. For example, in some countries, older age doesn’t necessarily bring greater contentment, particularly if welfare support is lacking (and in some societies, midlife is the peak of wellbeing). There may also be gender differences: the mid-40s slump could be skewed by particularly unhappy men.

This year, the entire shape of the curve has been questioned. It seems the young may be unhappier than previous generations, which is flattening out the classic smile-shape into something more like Mr Spock’s arched eyebrow. In sum, it’s more complex once you dig into the data.

However, I have no regrets about making midlife decisions based on a chart. The real power wasn’t in the curve’s accuracy, but in how it gave me permission to make positive changes. And growing older has taught me that, sometimes, life’s big choices must be made with imperfect information.

by Richard Fisher

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Fixating on happiness itself may not be the way to go, as this Psyche Idea argues: ‘As a Psychiatrist, I’ve Seen How Chasing Happiness Leads to Misery’ (2023) by Rafa Euba.

To learn more about the collapsing U-shape of the happiness curve among young people, watch this New York Times explainer video.


The eerie phenomenon that keeps popping up

A man in a tweed jacket viewing a framed German wanted poster on a wall in a museum or gallery setting.

Browsing Spotify for music to pull me through the slog of a grey February in New York, I came across the work of Labi Siffre, a 1970s artist I had never heard of. I was immediately taken with his delicate voice and simple, intimate musical arrangements.

Shortly after my precious discovery, Labi Siffre turned up in random places. I heard his crooning in coffee shops, a friend put him on at karaoke, and the singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus mentioned him as an artist who epitomised yearning. Labi Siffre was following me. Or at least that’s how I’d think about it if I didn’t know better. Instead, I thought: Baader-Meinhof.

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, also known as the frequency illusion, is a type of cognitive bias where, once you learn about something – such as a word, person or concept – you start to notice it more frequently. Your best friend clues you in on a slang term, and suddenly you see it endlessly in your feed. Your brother recommends a supplement, and you start repeatedly hearing ads for it. It feels eerie, especially if you don’t have a name for what’s happening.

Terry Mullen recalled feeling similarly when, after learning about a 1970s terrorist group called the Baader-Meinhof Gang, he encountered another mention of them the next day. He wrote to a newspaper about it in 1994. About a decade later, a Stanford professor proposed that a mix of selective attention and confirmation bias explains why something you are newly aware of might seem to happen all the time.

I first learned about this phenomenon in a psychology class at university. Today, when I feel it in action, I mutter ‘Baader-Meinhof’ under my breath. It helps me notice what I’m noticing, and the knowledge that my brain is primed for recognition dispels the feeling that I’m being sent some coded, mystical message – musical or otherwise.

by Hannah Seo

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The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is just one type of weird apparent coincidence. For a deeper dive on the subject, see the Aeon Essay ‘Are Coincidences Real?’ (2023) by Paul Broks.

For more on illusions and how attention can be misleading, check out the Psyche Idea ‘Sometimes, Paying Attention Means We See the World Less Clearly’ (2021) by Henry Taylor.


NOTE TO SELFSLEEP PROBLEMS

Sleep is important, but not that important

A person lying in bed under a duvet, arms covering face; bedside table with books, a lamp, a mug and reading glasses.

Over the past decade or so, there has been a huge shift in our attitude to sleep in the Western world. We’ve moved from ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’, ‘Sleep is for wimps’ and ‘Money never sleeps’ to scientists, doctors and health bloggers alike emphasising the huge importance of getting our Zzzs.

It’s positive that people now take sleep more seriously but, as a sleep researcher myself, I fear things have gone too far. Increasingly, many people, who by any objective measure are getting enough sleep, are worrying unnecessarily that their sleep is not ‘good enough’. In 2017, a group of US sleep experts coined the term ‘orthosomnia’ to refer to a desire for ‘perfect sleep’. They described how people are now arriving at clinics clutching a sleep tracker or a popular science book, explaining that they had always considered themselves to be good sleepers until…

Another unexpected consequence of so much promotion about the importance of sleep is that people who, for reasons outside of their control, are struggling to get enough sleep are becoming increasingly distressed about it. This applies to many people in society but, as one example, consider those who care for others with disabilities that require around-the-clock monitoring or support, and who therefore miss out on what my colleagues and I call ‘sleep privilege’ – the luxury, enjoyed by some, to sleep under optimal circumstances and conditions.

Yes, sleep is undoubtedly important, but dramatic headlines stating it is the most important factor for health, or that too little sleep can be devastating, are typically unwarranted, and it seems that its value might be beginning to be overinflated. Looking ahead, could it be that some of the challenges caused by undervaluing sleep will be replaced by those linked to overvaluing it?

by Alice Gregory

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Alice Gregory and her colleagues wrote about the dangers of sleep being overvalued in a recent open-access editorial for the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

If you’re concerned about your sleep, check out these Psyche Guides: ‘How to Sleep Well Again’ (2022) by Chris James, and ‘How to Sleep Well When You’re a Perfectionist’ (2024) by Nick Wignall.

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