Does nervousness the night before a big day mean you’re unprepared?
bsp; If you've been working hard, those nerves might mean the opposite -- you're going to do great: Via APA: Before the fall swim season, fourteen members of the women and men’s Northwestern University Swim and Dive Team completed online ratings of how tense they feel in general. Over the course of two months, the swimmers rated their feelings of tension each week. One day before competitions, participants also rated their tension. The researchers also noted the participants’ actual performance…
1 min read
What can Twitter teach us about happiness?
bsp; Twitter users around the world are generally happier in the morning and get less happy as the day progresses. Weekends are happier than weekdays though the morning happiness starts later -- probably because people are sleeping in. People are happier on holidays but major negative events (like the tsunami in Japan) can cause happiness to drop globally. Via readwriteweb: In his own study, Macy analyzed words expressing mood in 500 million tweets sent between February 2008 and January 2010.…
2 minutes
Does flirting help or hurt a woman when negotiating?
bsp; It helps. "Flirtation as opposed to friendliness, the research found, signals self-interest and competitiveness." Via Eurekalert: Does flirtation help or hurt a woman negotiating? According to new research, it helps – creating better economic outcomes for the female negotiators, if the flirtatiousness is perceived as above and beyond friendliness. The study examined "feminine charm" in negotiations through four different experiments, looking at the balance between friendliness and flirtatiousness. Flirtation as opposed to friendliness, the research found, signals self-interest…
1 min read
Do open-plan offices make you more productive and happy?
. They're an utter nightmare. Via Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking: Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. They’re associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure. Open-plan workers are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and elevated stress levels and to get the flu; they argue more with their colleagues; they worry about coworkers eavesdropping on their phone calls and spying…
1 min read
Are top experts more likely to be introverts?
s. Deliberate Practice can only really be performed alone so the more comfortable you are with solitude the faster you can become an expert. Via Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking: Teens who are too gregarious to spend time alone often fail to cultivate their talents “because practicing music or studying math requires a solitude they dread.” ...They found a striking difference among the groups. All three groups spent the same amount of time—…
2 minutes
What’s the most addictive drug?
at percentage of users become addicted? 4% of people who drink alcohol. 8% of people who use marijuana. 22% of people who smoke or inject cocaine. 35% of people who inject heroin. 80% of people who try cigarettes. Via The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good: A recent study of drug use in the United States estimates that about 35 percent of all people who have…
2 minutes
What techniques for giving feedback do they use to increase creativity at Pixar?
bsp; Give general direction in an upbeat manner. Don't be overly specific. By giving feedback this way it allows the person to engage their skills to render the final product. Too much fine grain detail removes their own talent from the process. Via Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries: Consider two ways that Docter could give feedback. One is very specific. “You can say, ‘Okay, in this scene, on frame number forty-seven, I want his arm reaching…
2 minutes
Can you tell the state of the economy by how women dress?
bsp; It appears you can. Via The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature: Over the past nine decades, several scholars decades, several scholars have noted a correlation between economic conditions and hemlines, the so-called Hemline Index: as the economy strengthens, the miniskirts come out. On a related note, the Lipstick Index, as put forth in 2001 by Leonard Lauder, the former chief executive office of Estée Lauder, suggests that as the economy…
2 minutes
