Why do you yawn?
cool your brain. Via Brain Candy: Science, Paradoxes, Puzzles, Logic, and Illogic to Nourish Your Neurons: When our brain gets hot, we cool it through the mouth, and the best way to cool through the mouth is by yawning. Researchers showed this by cooking parakeets. OK, they stopped short of actually cooking them, but they found that when temperature increased, the parakeet yawn rate doubled (there was no description of researchers’ yawn rates). This fits with our understanding of…
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What’s a quick way to become smarter?
bsp; Prime yourself by spending 5 minutes thinking about college professors. Via Mind Hacks: Tips & Tools for Using Your Brain Instead of influencing their subjects with an “elderly” stereotype, they set up an experiment in which participants had to spend 5 minutes describing either professors or secretaries. (The subjects, again, were undergraduates.) This time the experiment measured general knowledge, so the next stage of the experiment had the subjects answering Trivial Pursuit questions. They weren’t aware the two stages…
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Can you get stronger just by imagining exercise?
a Mind Hacks: Tips & Tools for Using Your Brain: Using your imagination alone you can train the motor signals from your brain so that you are stronger, faster, and more skillful. This example takes 3 months to work, so you may want to just listen to how the experiment was done rather than doing it yourself. It’s taken from a study led by Vinoth Ranganathan, who was following up on a study done 12 years previously by Guang Yue…
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What’s the best way to sit during an important conversation?
bsp; Sit next to the other person or at a 90 degree angle to them. Via The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism: When people are sitting across from each other with a table dividing them, they tend to speak in shorter sentences, are more likely to argue, and can recall less of what was said. Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: Things you didn't know about negotiation,…
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Can you predict the results of any business meeting without hearing a single word?
bsp; Via The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism: After extensive studies, the MIT Media Lab concluded that it could predict the outcome of negotiations, telephone sales calls, and business plan pitches with 87 percent accuracy simply by analyzing participants’ body language, without listening to a single word of content. And: When the MIT Media Lab concluded that they could predict the success of sales calls without listening to a single word, these…
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Is your handshake the most important part of a job interview?
bsp; Via The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism: ...experts at the University of Iowa analyzing interactions in job interviews declared handshakes “more important than agreeableness, conscientiousness, or emotional stability.” Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: 5 things you need to know before you change jobs What "bad" personality trait is very good in a job interview? The secret to getting a job
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What’s more contagious: happiness or sadness?
bsp; Happiness. So, ceteris paribus, more friends equals more happiness. Via Brain Candy: Science, Paradoxes, Puzzles, Logic, and Illogic to Nourish Your Neurons: It turns out that happiness is more catching than sadness. Specifically, a happy friend boosts your mood by 9 percent, while an unhappy friend lowers it by 7 percent. As long as you’re not specifically picking unhappy friends, the happiness gamble of extending your social network as widely as possible should pay off. Join 25K+ readers. Get…
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What have researchers learned about attraction from looking at the website HOT OR NOT?
bsp; Via Brain Candy: Science, Paradoxes, Puzzles, Logic, and Illogic to Nourish Your Neurons: Here are some of the things researchers have been able to discover using HOTorNOT.com’s magical numbers: • Men are 240 percent more likely to accept a date offer than women. • With each one-point gain in hotness (on a scale of 1 to 10), a person’s chances of being accepted for a date increase by 130 percent. • People who are themselves less attractive tend to…
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