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
How To Improve Depression And Anxiety With Memory And Attention Tricks
appears that depressed people focus too much on the bad. When trained to shift their attention, they experienced a major improvement: Selective attention for dysphoric stimuli has been observed in individuals with depression and those at risk for depression. To date, no studies have investigated the effects of directly manipulating selective attention for dysphoric stimuli on depressive symptoms. Mild to moderately depressed college students (N=34) were randomly assigned to complete 4 sessions of either attention training (AT) or no…
2 minutes
Compassion Is Contagious
e ability of compassion felt toward one person to reduce punishment directed at another was examined. The use of a staged interaction in which one individual cheats to earn higher compensation than others resulted in heightened third-party punishment being directed at the cheater. However, among participants who were induced to feel compassion toward a separate individual, punishment of the cheater disappeared even though the cheater clearly intended to cheat and showed no remorse for doing so. Moreover, additional analyses revealed…
1 min read
Can buying generic products reduce your self-esteem?
ople purchase generic products in an attempt to reduce costs. In this article, we showed that using generic products primes a devalued sense of self-worth manifested by increasing the likelihood of lower self-evaluations. In Experiment 1, participants were randomly assigned to use generic or genuine computer peripherals to make personal vitas for an upcoming recruitment orientation. Those using generic peripherals expected to earn a lower salary per month than the participants using original peripherals. Experiment 2 showed that the effect…
1 min read
Another trick to make yourself happier:
lunteering constitutes one of the most important pro-social activities. Following Adam Smith, helping others is the way to higher individual well-being. This view contrasts with the selfish utility maximizer who avoids costs from helping others. The two rival views are studied empirically. We find robust evidence that volunteers are more satisfied with their life than non-volunteers. Causality is addressed taking advantage of a natural experiment: the collapse of East Germany and its infrastructure of volunteering. People who accidentally lost their…
1 min read
