Can someone wishing you luck really improve your performance?
ctivating a positive superstitious belief can boost people's confidence, which in turn improves performance..." Via HBR Daily Stat citing APA: Activating a positive superstitious belief can boost people's confidence, which in turn improves performance: In an experiment, a dexterity task that normally took more than 5 minutes was accomplished in just 191.5 seconds, on average, if participants were wished good luck before they started it, according to research led by Lysann Damisch of the University of Cologne in Germany. Before trying to roll…
1 min read
This Is An Easy Way To Boost Your Learning Ability
ps: In the recent UC Berkeley sleep study, 39 healthy young adults were divided into two groups - nap and no-nap. At noon, all the participants were subjected to a rigorous learning task intended to tax the hippocampus, a region of the brain that helps store fact-based memories. Both groups performed at comparable levels. At 2 p.m., the nap group took a 90-minute siesta while the no-nap group stayed awake. Later that day, at 6 p.m., participants performed a new round…
1 min read
Should everyone be required to learn a musical instrument?
m sure it sounds strange: a fascist rule that makes people learn to create music. I'm not a hippie, nor am I Amy Chua. I've got evidence: A simple cost-benefit framework is used to estimate substantive social benefits associated with a universal music training program in Venezuela (B/C ratio of 1.68). Those social benefits accrue from both reduced school drop-out and declining community victimization. This evidence of important social benefits adds to the abundant evidence of individual gains reported by the developmental psychology…
2 minutes
Here’s How You Can Increase Your Attention Span In Just A Few Days
ditate: Recent studies suggest that months to years of intensive and systematic meditation training can improve attention. However, the lengthy training required has made it difficult to use random assignment of participants to conditions to confirm these findings. This article shows that a group randomly assigned to 5 days of meditation practice with the integrative body–mind training method shows significantly better attention and control of stress than a similarly chosen control group given relaxation training. The training method comes from…
1 min read
What’s a quick and easy way to boost cognitive performance?
ink a Red Bull: There has been a dramatic rise in the consumption of glucose energy drinks (e.g., Amp, Monster, and Red Bull) in the past decade, particularly among high school and college students. However, little laboratory research has examined the acute objective and subjective effects of energy drinks. The purpose of this study was to investigate the acute effects of a glucose energy drink (Red Bull) on cognitive functioning. Participants (N = 80) were randomly assigned to one of five…
2 minutes
The Simple Thing Will Help You Communicate Better, Learn More And Enhance Problem Solving
sturing when you talk. It can communicate important information when you're speaking: We explored how speakers and listeners use hand gestures as a source of perceptual-motor information during naturalistic communication. After solving the Tower of Hanoi task either with real objects or on a computer, speakers explained the task to listeners. Speakers’ hand gestures, but not their speech, reflected properties of the particular objects and the actions that they had previously used to solve the task. Speakers who solved the…
4 minutes
How to make sure you don’t choke under pressure:
e tips in this New York Times article were for golfers but I think the underlying ideas can be applied to most anything: Beilock suggested that golfers play games for small change with their friends on the practice putting green. If practicing alone, she said, a golfer ought to put some sort of incentive on the task, like promising to make 10 3-footers in a row before going home. “Anything that holds you to the consequences of not succeeding will…
2 minutes
Is stupidity contagious?
tching movies and TV shows about stupid people may temporarily make you stupider: Media priming refers to the residual, often unintended consequences of media use on subsequent perceptions, judgments, and behavior. Previous research showed that the media can prime behavior that is in line with the primed traits or concepts (assimilation). However, assimilation is expected to be less likely and priming may even yield reverse effects (contrast) when recipients have a dissimilarity testing mindset. Based on previous research on narrative…
1 min read
