One of the reasons I became interested in social sustainability was the ample evidence of manifold value of social capital. It appears to play a fundamental role in determining social outcomes, everything from educational attainment to health to crime seem to be impacted by social capital. And low levels of social capital seemed like the single root of many serious social problems, but addressable in low-tech ways (like Abundance League itself).
Today I came across a piece of evidence that near perfectly demonstrates this principle. The below quote is from an article in Medical News Today about recent research indicating that 10 minutes of conversation a day is just as effective as mental exercises in maintaining memory and cognition:
“In our study, socializing was just as effective as more traditional kinds of mental exercise in boosting memory and intellectual performance,” said Oscar Ybarra, a psychologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and a lead author of the study with ISR psychologist Eugene Burnstein and psychologist Piotr Winkielman from the University of California, San Diego.
So go ahead, make your day, have a conversation and be smarter for it. What could be easier?
