Does technology make us autistic?
even Johnson suggests that by stripping away the emotional information in faces and intonation, email and text messaging might be simulating autism. Via Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life: As the brain science of social connection becomes more widely appreciated, our communications tools will be judged increasingly with this yardstick. Attention deficit disorder is conventionally described as the classic ailment of our multitasking age, but when you look at most electronic communication through the lens…
2 minutes
What simple technique can make a sales pitch 20% more effective?
mic the customer's body language. Via Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World: Despite the rather obvious nature of the copycat animation, only eight of the sixty-nine subjects detected the mimicry (and those mostly because they made a strange movement and then saw the agent making the same unusual motion). The remaining students liked the mimicking agent more than the recorded agent, and rated the former as being friendlier as well as more interesting, honest, and persuasive. They also paid…
2 minutes
4 Secrets To A Good Apology, According To Research
a Wait: The Art and Science of Delay: Aaron Lazare devotes two full chapters of On Apology and much of his subsequent research to questions of timing and delay. He finds that effective apologies typically contain four parts: 1. Acknowledge that you did it. 2. Explain what happened. 3. Express remorse. 4. Repair the damage, as much as you can. This aligns with previous research on effective apologies: Results indicated that relationships recovered significantly when offending partners used behaviors labeled…
2 minutes
Here’s How Persuasive You Are When You Swear
ry: This experiment examined the effects of judicious swearing on persuasion in a pro-attitudinal speech. Participants listened to one of three versions of a speech about lowering tuition that manipulated where the word “damn” appeared (beginning, end, or nowhere). The results showed that obscenity at the beginning or end of the speech significantly increased the persuasiveness of the speech and the perceived intensity of the speaker. Obscenity had no effect on speaker credibility. Source: "Indecent influence: The positive effects of…
1 min read
The Best Way To Motivate People
phasize forward progress -- not for the sake of the project, but for your team members. Harvard's Teresa Amabile's research found that nothing is more motivating than progress in meaningful work and nothing more taxing than setbacks. Via The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work: This pattern is what we call the progress principle: of all the positive events that influence inner work life, the single most powerful is progress in meaningful work;…
2 minutes
Is it true that “when you smile the whole world smiles with you”?
a manner of speaking, yes. By smiling we influence others to smile. People judge things more positively while smiling, so our own smile can set off a chain reaction causing more positive encounters. Via Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To: The researchers found a chameleon effect. When confederates rubbed their faces, so did the student, and when confederates shook their feet, the participant did the same thing. This was…
2 minutes
These Are The Two Most Common Tricks Advertisers Are Using To Manipulate You
bsp; 1) Your "feared self." Via Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy: In a surprising 2008 study, researchers at the University of Bath, UK, found that the fear of failure drives consumers far more than the promise of success; the latter oddly tends to paralyze us, while the former spurs us on (and pries open our wallets). In fact, as the study found, the most powerful persuader of all was giving consumers a…
2 minutes
Are stories we can relate to the key to learning?
a Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success: In 2003, Greg Walton and Geoffrey Cohen, two American psychologists, devised an intriguing experiment. They took a group of Yale undergraduates and gave them an insoluble math puzzle to work on—but with a small catch. Beforehand, the students were asked to read a report written by former Yale math student Nathan Jackson. This was ostensibly to provide the students with a bit of background information on the math department,…
3 minutes
