Can combing your hair improve your grades?
ybe. Grooming is associated with higher GPA's. Could be that those who are conscientious about their appearance are also more on top of their schoolwork. Then again, combing your hair might get you better grades if the correlation is due to teacher bias toward attractive or conscientious-looking students, something the researchers do mention: Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we investigate whether certain aspects of personal appearance (i.e., physical attractiveness, personality, and grooming) affect…
2 minutes
The Main Reason Most People Are Late For Work
ntext. Does everyone else come in late? If so, it doesn't seem so bad: The authors investigated the joint influence of contextual factors and individual attitudes on employee lateness in a field setting. Hierarchical regression analyses based on objective lateness data revealed that perceived lateness climate moderated the relationship between individual lateness attitudes and lateness behaviors. Specifically, as hypothesized, individual attitudes toward lateness were stronger predictors of actual lateness frequency in lenient climates. This moderating effect was observed when controlling…
1 min read
What’s a trick we can use to make sure we do the right thing?
niel Akst, author of We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess, has a piece in Slate where he explains how we can use "precommitment devices" to rein in desire: How can you use precommitment to keep yourself from giving in to unwanted desires? You're probably already doing so—for example, by asking your significant other, on the way to a restaurant, not to let you order dessert when you get there. Dan Ariely, that tireless student of…
2 minutes
3 Ways Bubble Gum Can Dramatically Improve Your Life
Yes, gum can make you smarter: Recent reports suggest that enhancement of memory performance while chewing gum is a fairly robust phenomenon. The processes underlying the effect are not known, but may involve glucose delivery, context-dependent effects and arousal mechanisms amongst others.This brief commentary outlines the main findings from these studies and raises some issues regarding interpretation, methodology and future research directions. Source: "Chewing gum and cognitive performance: a case of a functional food with function but no food?" from Appetite 43 (2004)…
3 minutes
What predicts achievement better than intelligence, grades or personality?
pe. A 3-year longitudinal study explored whether the two-dimensional model of trait hope predicted degree scores after considering intelligence, personality, and previous academic achievement. A sample of 129 respondents (52 males, 77 females) completed measures of trait hope, general intelligence, the five factor model of personality, divergent thinking, as well as objective measures of their academic performance before university (‘A’ level grades) and final degree scores. The findings suggest that hope uniquely predicts objective academic achievement above intelligence, personality, and…
1 min read
Does fantasizing give you the motivation to achieve your goals?
pe. Fantasies sap the energy you need to achieve your goals: Positive fantasies allow people to mentally indulge in a desired future. Whereas previous research found that spontaneously generated positive fantasies about the future predict poor achievement, we examined the effect of experimentally induced positive fantasies about the future. The present four experiments identify low energy, measured by physiological and behavioral indicators, as a mechanism by which positive fantasies translate into poor achievement. Induced positive fantasies resulted in less energy…
1 min read
What motivates us more than most anything else?
ogress. I've posted about this before. In his excellent blog Mind Hacks, Vaughan Bell points out that we don't even need to make real progress -- the illusion of progress is enough to light that fire: I just came across a fantastic study published in the Journal of Marketing Research which shows that we can be convinced to shift into a higher gear of work and spending, even when the perception of progress is a complete illusion. And: They did an experiment where they gave some…
1 min read
What’s a good way to trick yourself into getting work done?
xtronet offers a good tip and I've used this successfully myself: I tell myself that I will merely write down the steps needed to complete the task. Just a rough draft, at first, and that’s it. Maybe just 3 steps. I then add more steps, breaking the 3 steps into smaller sub-tasks. I then add some details, and thoughts, notes of things that I shouldn’t forget when doing this task. I just think the task through and write everything down. After a…
1 min read
