Do looks matter in job interviews?
s. Science Daily reports on a study showing that people with people with birthmarks, scars and other facial disfigurements are more likely to receive poor ratings in job interviews: "Discrimination Against Facially Stigmatized Applicants in Interviews: An Eye-Tracking and Face-to-Face Investigation" was published online last month in the Journal of Applied Psychology and is one of the first studies to examine how individuals with facial blemishes fare in job interviews. The findings show that interviewers recalled less information about these…
1 min read
Can a promotion at work save your life?
omotions reduce the chance of developing heart disease: The positive relationship between SES and health is well documented but limited evidence exists regarding the effect of an exogenous manipulation of SES on health. This article estimates the effect of promotions on heart disease using data on British civil servants from the Whitehall II study. Differences in promotion rates across departments and cohorts generate plausibly exogenous variation in promotion opportunities. The results suggest that promotions may reduce the probability of developing…
1 min read
3 ways playing video games can improve your life:
Video games might make you more creative. From Eurekalert: Both boys and girls who play video games tend to be more creative, regardless of whether the games are violent or nonviolent, according to new research by Michigan State University scholars. A study of nearly 500 12-year-olds found that the more kids played video games, the more creative they were in tasks such as drawing pictures and writing stories. In contrast, use of cell phones, the Internet and computers (other than…
2 minutes
Rude People Have Higher Credit Scores
ople who rate low on agreeableness have higher credit scores. From Science Daily: "With regards to personality and credit -- it makes sense that conscientiousness is related to good credit, but what was really interesting was that agreeableness was negatively related to your credit score," said Jeremy Bernerth, assistant professor in LSU's E. J. Ourso College of Business Rucks Department of Management. "That suggests easy-going individuals actually have worse credit scores than disagreeable and rude individuals. This suggests that agreeable…
1 min read
How confident should you be at work today?
derately overconfident. Being slightly delusional is a good thing here. You'll choose more challenging tasks and this study shows it's an advantageous attitude to have. But don't be extremely overconfident: People use information about their ability to choose tasks. If more challenging tasks provide more accurate information about ability, people who care about and who are risk averse over their perception of their own ability will choose tasks that are not sufficiently challenging. Overestimation of ability raises utility by deluding…
2 minutes
3 Ways Bubble Gum Can Dramatically Improve Your Life
Yes, gum can make you smarter: Recent reports suggest that enhancement of memory performance while chewing gum is a fairly robust phenomenon. The processes underlying the effect are not known, but may involve glucose delivery, context-dependent effects and arousal mechanisms amongst others.This brief commentary outlines the main findings from these studies and raises some issues regarding interpretation, methodology and future research directions. Source: "Chewing gum and cognitive performance: a case of a functional food with function but no food?" from Appetite 43 (2004)…
3 minutes
When It Comes To Salary, Thin Women Win
in women make more money. Weight has a positive effect on men's salary until they're obese: Cultivation theory suggests that society holds very different body standards for men versus women, and research indicates that the consequences of defying these social norms may not be linear. To test these notions in the employment context, we examined the relationship between weight and income and the degree to which the relationship varies by gender. For women, we theorized a negative weight–income relationship that…
1 min read
Can you judge leadership potential by looking at someone’s earlobes?
.our research shows that people with subtle asymmetries—for example, imbalances in ear or finger length—are often better “transformational” leaders, able to inspire followers to put self-interest aside for the good of the group. Furthermore, teams they lead outperform teams whose leaders have more-symmetrical bodies. And: Teams with asymmetrical leaders scored nearly 20% higher than others. Although the sorts of asymmetries we examined are barely perceptible, humans are unconsciously sensitive to them. We posit that people born with asymmetries tend to develop…
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