How much education did the greatest creative geniuses of all time need?
out college-dropout level. Via Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else: Dean Keith Simonton, a professor at the University of California at Davis, conducted a large-scale study of more than three hundred creative high achievers born between 1450 and 1850—Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Beethoven, Rembrandt, for example. He determined the amount of formal education each had received and measured each one’s level of eminence by the spaces devoted to them in an array of reference works.…
1 min read
7 Things Every Facebook User Needs To Know, Backed By Research
bsp; Your Facebook profile probably reveals your true personality. It's especially indicative of how extroverted and open to new experience you are but it can also tell people whether you have anxiety and even predict your job performance. I wouldn't get too paranoid though; most people just judge you off the photo. Then again that photo can predict how happy you'll be 3.5 years from now. (Just from status updates, Facebook knows how happy the entire US is every…
2 minutes
What makes you appear smarter and more sociable?
er at the judg.me blog they posted the results of some number crunching based on snap judgment reactions to photos. The results are a fascinating collection of the stereotypes we hold about appearance and personality traits/qualities. Here are some quick highlights: The average woman is seen as smarter and more sociable than the average guy. Redheads are seen as dumber than blondes. Women with dyed hair or short hair are seen as extroverted. Bald men are perceived as intelligent. Beards…
1 min read
5 Things Your Clothes Are Saying About You
me findings about clothes from psychological research: Different color clothing says different things about you. Most interesting is that studies show red has some pretty unique effects. For the most part, red seems to mean sex. Research shows it makes men more attractive to women. It makes women more attractive to men. It helps hitchikers get picked up. (More on the odd and interesting effects of red here.) Dressing young can make you healthier. Glasses make you look smarter but…
1 min read
5 Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Someone – Backed By Research
re are the things you can tell just by looking at someone As for personality, you can generally trust your gut when guessing extraversion, self-esteem, and religiosity. If you have a spontaneously taken photo of them you can add in agreeableness, emotional stability, openness, likability, and loneliness. Your predictions are probably more accurate when evaluating good-looking people. Who is a good leader? The face will tell you. (True for women as well as men.) Or just look at the earlobes. Not…
2 minutes
Can starving yourself for a while every day improve health, extend life and make you look good?
termittent fasting may have very powerful effects: Restricting caloric intake to 60-70% of normal adult weight maintenance requirement prolongs lifespan 30-50% and confers near perfect health across a broad range of species. Every other day feeding produces similar effects in rodents, and profound beneficial physiologic changes have been demonstrated in the absence of weight loss in ob/ob mice. Since May 2003 we have experimented with alternate day calorie restriction, one day consuming 20-50% of estimated daily caloric requirement and the…
3 minutes
This Quality Makes A Man Smarter, Faster, And A Better Lover
mmetry. (The more the left side of a man's body matches the right side, the more symmetrical he is. Take a close look at your face in the mirror and you'll notice that the two sides are not perfect twins.) Symmetry is a sign of good genes and one of the cornerstones of physical beauty. Via In Your Face: The New Science of Human Attraction: Men with symmetrical bodies apparently have a higher IQ, they run faster, dance better, sing…
1 min read
Watching TV Increases Empathy
s. Via an excellent piece by Jonathan Gottschall in the Boston Globe: As the psychologist Raymond Mar writes, “Researchers have repeatedly found that reader attitudes shift to become more congruent with the ideas expressed in a [fictional] narrative.” For example, studies reliably show that when we watch a TV show that treats gay families nonjudgmentally (say, “Modern Family”), our own views on homosexuality are likely to move in the same nonjudgmental direction. And it's not just TV. It's fiction, in…
2 minutes
