Adam Alter interview: Can the color red make you look sexy?
am Alter Adam Alter is an assistant professor of marketing at NYU's Stern School of Business. His new book Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave explores the incredible (and vastly underestimated) power of context in our lives. Adam and I spoke about the color that can make you appear sexy and powerful, what money means to your brain, and how the weather influences your ability to think. My conversation with Adam was…
6 minutes
Is being delusional a good thing?
ing delusional is bad Which person does everyone think is going to get into heaven? "Me." Via Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan: One of my favorite examples of this human tendency comes from a survey conducted by U.S. News and World Report in 1997. The survey asked one thousand Americans the following question: “Who do you think is most likely to get into heaven?” Respondents indicated a 52 percent likelihood for then president…
4 minutes
Are nice people more likely to win a Nobel prize?
at's it take to win a Nobel prize? How about "being nice"? The other day I posted the research for and against "nice guys finish last." Turns out there's one more area where being good pays off. How do we know? Researchers who hog the credit on scientific papers are less likely to win a Nobel prize. Those who give younger academics a bit of the spotlight are more likely to have a trip to Stockholm in their future. Via The…
3 minutes
“Nice guys finish last.” Really? What does the research say?
ice guys finish last." Is it true? To some degree it depends on what area of life we're talking about. Let's see what the research has to say... Money Nice guys finish last here. More agreeable people make less money: ...men who measured below average on agreeableness earned about 18% more—or $9,772 more annually in their sample—than nicer guys. Ruder women, meanwhile, earned about 5% or $1,828 more than their agreeable counterparts. “Nice guys are getting the shaft,” says study co-author…
4 minutes
What the heck does “meaning in life” mean, anyway?
searchers at Tohoku University in Japan did a 7 year study of over 43,000 adults age 40 to 79 asking if they had ikigai (a Japanese term for meaning in life) and then tracked their health. People with ikigai were much more likely to be alive 7 years later. Via Pursuing the Good Life: 100 Reflections on Positive Psychology: Even when likely confounds were taken into account, ikigai predicted who was still alive after 7 years. Said another way, 95% of…
2 minutes
9 Expert Insights That Will Make You Productive, Successful And Smart
pert Tip #1: How To Be More Creative Your first idea is rarely the best. Always keep pushing and generate more possibilities. Advice from Andrew Goldberg, writer on Family Guy: I’m a big fan of writing "alts" (versions). If I come to a joke spot, even if I’m working on my own stuff, I’ll often write three or four or five different alts, and then I’ll show it to friends, show it to my wife, show it to my manager, show…
7 minutes
Where does the best advice come from?
re and more I'm seeing the power of giving -- and taking -- advice. In my interview with Jeffrey Pfeffer (Stanford professor and author of Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t) he said the best way to build a strategic relationship with someone far more powerful than you was merely to ask their advice: I would say that the fundamentally best way to build a relationship with someone is to ask them for their advice. And/or what you can often…
3 minutes
Are you worrying enough?
body likes to worry. And of the big five personality traits, being neurotic is almost always a bad thing. We can talk about the pros and cons of introverts and extroverts, or debate the upside and downside of being conscientious but neuroticism always seems to be a negative. However, there are a few exceptions. Worrying, in reasonable amounts, ups your game by making you aware of problems and more likely to address them. For instance, it can make worriers better…
3 minutes
