How you can deal with angry people without losing your cool:
Tell yourself they are having a bad day and that it's not about you. Via US News: Telling yourself that an angry person is just having a bad day and…
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What’s an easy way to feel more powerful?
Lower your voice: Voice pitch may not only influence the listeners but also the speakers themselves. Based on the theories of embodied cognition and previous research on power, we tested…
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How can you learn to be more charismatic?
Over at the excellent BPS Research Digest there's a great review of research on charisma. Is it something that can be learned? Yes: Managers who underwent training saw their charisma…
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Is offering candy to dieters a great way to sell them a car?
Self-control is a limited resource. When we use it to resist temptation we have less left to defend against persuasive appeals: Four studies investigated a self-control theory of resistance to…
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Is mimicry the key to sales?
From Harvard Business Review: Retail salespeople who subtly mimic customers' speech and behavior are more successful at selling... 78.8% bought such a product from mimickers, compared with 61.8% from nonmimickers. Afterward, customers who had…
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Should you be as nice as humanly possible to your doctor?
Doctors take pain more seriously when they like the patient: This study examined the influence of patients’ likability on pain estimations made by observers. Patients’ likability was manipulated by means…
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Does happiness or sadness make us better negotiators?
In their version, before beginning the game, Lount and Murnighan asked some trustors to write about an experience that made them happy and asked other trustors to write about an…
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What’s an easy way to get others to agree to help you out?
Demonstrate that the two of you have something in common: Four studies examined the effect of an incidental similarity on compliance to a request. Undergraduates who believed they shared a…
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