Does lack of sleep make us unethical?
draw from the Ego Depletion model and research on sleep physiology to predict a relationship between lack of sleep and individuals’ unethical behavior. Laboratory studies showed that sleep quantity is positively related to self-control resources and negative associated with unethical behavior. In a cross-sectional field study examining unethical behavior in a variety of work settings, low levels of sleep, and low perceived quality of sleep, were both positively related to unethical behavior as rated by the supervisor, and cognitive…
1 min read
What do we regret the most?
this study of regret among a representative sample of Americans, the authors examined hypotheses derived from regret regulation theory, which asserts that regrets motivate a range of ameliorative cognitive consequences. Using a random-digit telephone survey, respondents reported a salient regret, then answered questions about that regret. Results showed inaction regrets lasted longer than action regrets, and that greater loss severity corresponded to more inaction regrets. Regrets more often focused on nonfixable than fixable situations. Women more than men reported…
1 min read
Do playful people get better grades in school?
s: The study examines the relation between subjectively assessed adult playfulness and psychometric and self-estimated intelligence in a sample of 254 students. As expected, playfulness existed widely independently from psychometric intelligence. Correlations pointed in the direction of higher expressive playfulness and numeric intelligence and lower creative playfulness and figural intelligence. However, the size of the coefficients suggests that the results should not be over-interpreted. The same was true for self-estimates of intelligence. Those scoring lower in the total score of…
2 minutes
How To Quickly And Easily Reduce Anxiety
focused on a particular scent — vanilla — that prior olfactory research has tied to reductions in anxiety. In a medical study of patients undergoing a tense procedure for cancer diagnosis, a vanilla scent mixed into humidified air lessened anxiety up to 63% compared to patients who were administered humidified air alone (Redd et al. 2005). The retail domain has noticed vanilla’s beneficial effects too, with stores such as Sony Style diffusing a blend of vanilla and orange notes…
1 min read
Are people noticing you more or less than you think they are?
is research provides evidence that people overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noted by others, a phenomenon dubbed the spotlight effect. In Studies 1 and 2, participants who were asked to don a T-shirt depicting either a flattering or potentially embarrassing image overestimated the number of observers who would be able to recall what was pictured on the shirt. In Study 3, participants in a group discussion overestimated how prominent their positive and negative utterances were…
1 min read
Does fairness in the workplace improve your health?
bsp; Objectives Previous studies have suggested that the extent to which employees are treated with justice at the workplace contributes to their health. We examined whether justice at work predicted incidence of deaths from cardiovascular disease. Methods Participants were 804 factory workers whose mortality data were collected from the Finnish national mortality register (73 deaths; mean follow-up, 25.6 years). Justice perceptions of the participants were measured using a postal survey at baseline year 1973. Results Cox proportional hazards models adjusted…
2 minutes
How to get yourself to exercise more:
op thinking about the beginning: To examine whether—and why—people underestimate how much they enjoy exercise. Design: Across four studies, 279 adults predicted how much they would enjoy exercising, or reported their actual feelings after exercising. Main Outcome Measures: Main outcome measures were predicted and actual enjoyment ratings of exercise routines, as well as intention to exercise. Results: Participants significantly underestimated how much they would enjoy exercising; this affective forecasting bias emerged consistently for group and individual exercise, and moderate and…
1 min read
How can you reduce pain?
in is a complex subjective experience that is shaped by numerous contextual factors. For example, simply viewing the body reduces the reported intensity of acute physical pain. In this study, we investigated whether this visually induced analgesia is modulated by the visual size of the stimulated body part. We measured contact heat-pain thresholds while participants viewed either their own hand or a neutral object in three size conditions: reduced, actual size, or enlarged. Vision of the body was analgesic, increasing…
1 min read
