Do you underestimate the power of touching?
a the New York Times: Studies show touching has the power to encourage, reduce pain and communicate: Students who received a supportive touch on the back or arm from a teacher were nearly twice as likely to volunteer in class as those who did not, studies have found. A sympathetic touch from a doctor leaves people with the impression that the visit lasted twice as long, compared with estimates from people who were untouched. Research by Tiffany Field of the…
2 minutes
What tricks do stores use to get us to buy?
is is from an interview with Lee Eisenberg, author of Shoptimism: Why the American Consumer Will Keep on Buying No Matter What. Join over 190,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: How To Stop Being Lazy And Get More Done – 5 Expert Tips How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior Expert New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More Successful
1 min read
How To Instantly Get Smarter
tting people to think about professors (or other stereotypically smart groups) improved their smarts for 15 minutes. The reverse was true too: getting people to think about stereotypically stupid people reduced performance. The authors tested and confirmed the hypothesis that priming a stereotype or trait leads to complex overt behavior in line with this activated stereotype or trait. Specifically, 4 experiments established that priming the stereotype of professors or the trait intelligent enhanced participants' performance on a scale measuring general…
1 min read
Can computers teach us everything we need to know about cooperation?
ve posted before about Robert Axelrod's research on cooperation; computers were assigned different strategies in the famous prisoner's dilemma and for thousands upon thousands of rounds they faced each other to see which method led to the most success. The best strategy by far turned out to be one we're all familiar with: tit-for-tat. In chapter six of his book, The Evolution of Cooperation, Axelrod explains how we can translate the findings of these computer tournaments into advice that's useful…
3 minutes
Is 5-to-1 the golden ratio for both work and romantic relationships?
om Richard Conniff's interesting book, The Ape in the Corner Office: How to Make Friends, Win Fights and Work Smarter by Understanding Human Nature: It turned out that the fifteen high-performance teams averaged 5.6 positive interactions for every negative one. The nineteen low-performance teams racked up a positive/negative ratio of just .363. That is, they had about three negative interactions for every positive one... And: What's even scarier is that Losada's five-to-one ratio also appears to be essential when you…
1 min read
Can combing your hair improve your grades?
ybe. Grooming is associated with higher GPA's. Could be that those who are conscientious about their appearance are also more on top of their schoolwork. Then again, combing your hair might get you better grades if the correlation is due to teacher bias toward attractive or conscientious-looking students, something the researchers do mention: Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we investigate whether certain aspects of personal appearance (i.e., physical attractiveness, personality, and grooming) affect…
2 minutes
Does guilting people really work?
minding people of their transgressions causes them to improve their behavior: People’s desires to see themselves as moral actors can contribute to their striving for and achievement of a sense of self-completeness. The authors use self-completion theory to predict (and show) that recalling one’s own (im)moral behavior leads to compensatory rather than consistent moral action as a way of completing the moral self. In three studies, people who recalled their immoral behavior reported greater participation in moral activities (Study 1),…
1 min read
The Main Reason Most People Are Late For Work
ntext. Does everyone else come in late? If so, it doesn't seem so bad: The authors investigated the joint influence of contextual factors and individual attitudes on employee lateness in a field setting. Hierarchical regression analyses based on objective lateness data revealed that perceived lateness climate moderated the relationship between individual lateness attitudes and lateness behaviors. Specifically, as hypothesized, individual attitudes toward lateness were stronger predictors of actual lateness frequency in lenient climates. This moderating effect was observed when controlling…
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