What should you do when you’re caught red-handed?
ile. The authors investigated the social significance of human smiles, specifically the penchant for transgressors who smile to be judged more leniently than those who do not. Of particular interest was whether different types of smiles generate different degrees of leniency and what mediated the effect. Subjects judged a case of possible academic misconduct. Materials included a photograph of a female target displaying a neutral expression, felt smile, false smile, or miserable smile. Smiling targets received more leniency than nonsmiling…
1 min read
Does too much computer time degrade social skills?
o much time at the keyboard and not enough time with people may reduce the ability to read nonverbal signals, to judge the intent of others and influence them: Via Harvard Business Review: Today's young digital natives may be ill-suited for jobs in high-trust fields such as diplomacy and sales, because prolonged exposure to computers is reconfiguring their neural networks and possibly diminishing their empathy and social skills, says John K. Mullen of Gonzaga University. With 55% of person-to-person communication…
1 min read
Should we never trust economics majors?
hat did you major in at college?" might be a good questions for that next first date or before starting a business partnership. Economics majors were consistently: More likely to accept bribes Less inclined to pro-social behavior. More likely to free-ride in public-goods experiments. Offered less in ultimatum games. More likely to defect in prisoner's dilemma games. More likely to place profit over employee well-being in business simulations. Less likely to donate to charity. The abstract: A substantial body of…
2 minutes
What quality do we most desire in other people?
ross different types of groups and relationships (work, athletic teams, family members) trustworthiness was at the top: Humans, as discriminately social creatures, make frequent judgments about others’ suitability for interdependent social relations. Which characteristics of others guide these judgments and, thus, shape patterns of human affiliation? Extant research is only minimally useful for answering this question. On the basis of a sociofunctional analysis of human sociality, the authors hypothesized that people highly value trustworthiness and (to a lesser extent) cooperativeness…
2 minutes
This Is What Keeps Men And Women Sexually Satisfied
searchers surveyed 1000 couples in 5 countries looking at sexual satisfaction in relationships 1-51 years in length. Some interesting points: Men were more sexually satisfied with with their relationship when they had frequent recent sex and fewer lifetime sexual partners: "Lifetime number of sexual partners was a significant predictor of sexual but not relationship satisfaction, and this only for men. Men reported more lifetime sexual partners than women (M = 11.9 vs. 4.9). More sexual partners predicted less sexual satisfaction.…
3 minutes
Do people like us better when we’re distracted?
ems like it. It's not that being distracted isn't off-putting, but when distracted we're less negative, less complex and more personal in our speech. We also encourage the other person to talk more. From James Pennebaker's book The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us: ...distracted pairs actually showed slightly higher style matching than the non-distracted pair. Even odder, they tended to report liking each other more. In terms of actual word use, the distracted students were…
2 minutes
How To Get People To Be More Honest With You
ght want to Skype more often. People lie more often via text message. We're more honest via video than we are in the other mediums tested -- including in face to face. Via Science Daily: Sending a text message leads people to lie more often than in other forms of communication, according to new research by David Xu, assistant professor in the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University. And I found this surprising: The authors then…
1 min read
How much should we trust others? What are the consequences of trusting too much or too little?
ople were asked how much they trust others on a scale of 1 to 10. Income peaked at those who responded with the number 8. Those with the highest levels of trust had incomes 7% lower than the 8's. Research shows they are more likely to be taken advantage of. Those with the lowest levels of trust had an income 14.5% lower than 8's. That loss is the equivalent of not going to college. They missed many opportunities by not…
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