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
Could the current economic problems actually make us happier in the end?
depends on how we respond to it all. There's an excellent article in the New York Times by Stephanie Rosenbloom about people who have simplified their lives in response to the recession -- and ended up much happier for it. Some experts are saying these new habits could outlast the current economic downturn. Takeaways below: On the bright side, the practices that consumers have adopted in response to the economic crisis ultimately could — as a raft of new research suggests —…
2 minutes
Do straight-A students live longer?
a the New York Times: The findings come from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which has been following more than 10,000 people who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957. Those students who finished in the top 25 percent of their high school class were healthier, decades later, than the ones who finished in the bottom quarter. When they were all in their early 60s, those who had finished in the top quartile were, over all, half as likely to have experienced…
1 min read
Can taking a shower make you less moralistic?
eories of moral judgment have long emphasized reasoning and conscious thought while downplaying the role of intuitive and contextual influences. However, recent research has demonstrated that incidental feelings of disgust can influence moral judgments and make them more severe. This study involved two experiments demonstrating that the reverse effect can occur when the notion of physical purity is made salient, thus making moral judgments less severe. After having the cognitive concept of cleanliness activated (Experiment 1) or after physically cleansing…
1 min read
Are narcissists happier?
ung narcissists might be: Previous studies have noted that narcissists do, in some cases, experience benefits. The current study adds to this discussion by examining whether age might moderate the links between narcissism and a self-reported benefit (life satisfaction) and an observer-reported benefit (observer ratings of personality). In a sample of college students and their family members (N = 807), the authors demonstrate that narcissism positively correlates with life satisfaction for adolescents and emerging adults, but not for adult participants. In…
1 min read
How is it that prayer helps you — even if you’re an atheist?
m not religious, so this is not an attempt to convert anyone. A few months ago I posted from an abstract showing that the act of prayer can be beneficial -- even if you don't believe. Why is that? A new study gives some good insight: Many individuals use prayer to manage negative emotions, but scholars know little about how prayer accomplishes this task. Using in-depth interview data from victims of intimate partner violence, I argue that prayer is an imaginary social support…
1 min read
Is there a way to trick yourself into exercising more?
o studies demonstrated that leading individuals to mentally reframe the time required for an exercise program (e.g., 2 hr per week) in terms of the equivalent daily amount (e.g., 17 min per day) reduced the perceived time commitment and increased people's willingness to try the program. Study 2 also identified a cognitive mechanism that mediated the effect of temporal framing on exercise intentions. Consistent with findings in other domains (Gourville, 1998), reframing exercise duration in daily units led participants to retrieve comparison activities…
1 min read
Should “carpe diem” be our motto?
u will not have more time next week, and, as a very interesting New York Times piece explains, we never seem to remember that fact: There is never enough time or money; this much we all know. Yet a new study finds that when people estimate how much of each they will have in the future, they are consistently more likely to overestimate their time than their dollars. Dr. Gal Zauberman of the University of North Carolina and Dr. John Lynch of…
3 minutes
