How can you become the leader of a group even when you don’t know what you’re talking about?
bsp; Speak first. Speak confidently. Speak often. In a study involving groups solving math problems, leaders proved to be no more competent than the other members. Those with the most dominant personalities ended up running things and it was because they spoke first and most forcefully. Via The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us: As you’ve probably anticipated, in the actual experiment, the group leaders proved to be no more competent than anyone else. They became leaders by force…
2 minutes
What’s a fun way to increase creativity, reaction time, improve multitasking and make your mind more flexible?
ay video games. 1) Games might increase creativity: A study of nearly 500 12-year-olds found that the more kids played video games, the more creative they were in tasks such as drawing pictures and writing stories. In contrast, use of cell phones, the Internet and computers (other than for video games) was unrelated to creativity, the study found... regardless of gender, race or type of game played, greater video game playing was the only technology to be associated with greater creativity.…
1 min read
Can you play the stock market just based on knowledge of human behavior?
would be an interesting experiment to try. The vast majority of people are going off bad information, irrational hunches and specious theories anyway, so why not? Pick stocks with pleasant sounding names. Or companies with awesome Super Bowl commercials. Follow Twitter trends or popular music. Is that CEO unmarried? Single guys take more risks in their personal life and with their companies. Does he fly planes or have a huge mortgage? He'll be taking risks at the office too.…
2 minutes
How does the human mind handle conflicts of interest?
bsp; Easily. It ignores them. Via Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average: “Suppose you are a casual investor and you find out that IBM is getting consulting services from its auditor,” says Loewenstein. “Or suppose your doctor recommends an X-ray and then says he has an interest in the X-ray facility. In neither of those cases would you have a clue what to…
1 min read
How can you save a lot of money on wine?
bsp; Serve cheap wine in expensive bottles. People can't tell the difference. Via Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average: Researchers from Stanford and the California Institute of Technology recently asked twenty volunteers to taste and evaluate five wine samples that were labeled according to price: $5, $10, $35, $45, and $90 a bottle. The volunteers were similar to many of us: they were…
2 minutes
Are younger siblings faster?
bsp; "In all, history's fastest runners were born, on average, fourth in families of 4.6 children." Via The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How: ...the youngest kids were frequently the fastest runners. It became more interesting when I broadened the sample group slightly. Here are the birth-order ranks of the world-record progression in the 100-meter dash, with the most recently set world record first, the previous world record second, and so on. Usain Bolt (second of three…
1 min read
How much status does money bring you?
o double your social status, you need to earn about 2.6 times as much". Via William Poundstone's Priceless: the Myth of Fair Value and How to Take Advantage of It: To double your social status, you need to earn about 2.6 times as much, according to one study by Stevens. And: Stevens lived long enough to see a number of careful studies measuring the subjective impact of money. In 1959 the Japanese psychophysicist Tarow Indow showed pictures and descriptions of…
1 min read
Is it better to be a Chinese student or an abused woman?
bsp; Abused women score notably higher (21/35) on tests of happiness than Chinese or Eastern European students (16-19/35). Via Martin Seligman's Authentic Happiness: Tens of thousands of individuals across several cultures have taken the test. Here are some representative norms: Among older American adults, men score 28 on average and women score 26. The average North American college student scores between 23 and 25; eastern European and Chinese students on average score between 16 and 19. Male prison inmates score…
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