What’s an easy trick for quitting bad habits and starting good ones?
rvard professor Shawn Achor says it's as simple as making bad habits harder to do and good habits easier. Via Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness (Harvard's Most Popular Course): I took a stop watch, took the batteries out of the remote control and walked them exactly 20 seconds away to my bedroom. I then started the experiment again and watched myself. Over the next couple of days I’d come home and sit down on the couch exhausted and press the on…
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Do unmarried CEO’s take bigger risks?
bsp; Yes: Relative wealth concerns can affect risk-taking behavior, as the payoff to a marginal dollar of wealth depends on the wealth of others. We develop a model where status concerns arise endogenously due to competition in the marriage market and lead to greater risk-taking for unmarried individuals. We evaluate empirically the importance of this effect in a high-stakes setting by studying corporate CEOs. We find that single CEOs, who are more likely to exhibit status concerns, are associated with…
1 min read
Can drinking more make you eat less?
s. Via Brain Trust: 93 Top Scientists Reveal Lab-Tested Secrets to Surfing, Dating, Dieting, Gambling, Growing Man-Eating Plants, and More!: Dr. Davy showed this by prescribing two cups of water before a meal. In the course of a twelve-week study, subjects who drank water before a low-calorie meal lost an average of five pounds more than subjects who simply ate the low-calorie meal. In a yearlong follow-up to this study, Davy found that even with the removal of the low-calorie…
1 min read
Does perfectionism lead to increased performance or does it sabotage the perfectionist?
a Brain Trust: 93 Top Scientists Reveal Lab-Tested Secrets to Surfing, Dating, Dieting, Gambling, Growing Man-Eating Plants, and More!: Researchers at the Canadian Dalhousie University found compelling evidence of the latter— psychology professors with perfectionist strivings had fewer journal articles, fewer citations, and were published in less prestigious journals than their messy-and-proud peers. However, for athletes perfectionism can be a good thing: The findings suggest that perfectionism is not necessarily a maladaptive characteristic that generally undermines sport performance. Instead, when…
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Can anyone predict which movies will make money?
itter can't predict box office: Felix Ming Fai Wong and pals at Princeton University in New Jersey, pour cold water on the idea that Twitter is a reliable predictor of the future, at least as far as the success of movies is concerned... the Twitter data does not always translate into box office revenue (although in some cases it can). "Marketers need to be careful about drawing conclusions regarding the net box-office outcome for a movie," conclude Wong and co.…
1 min read
Why do people file for divorce in March more than any other month?
ter the holidays are over and it's a new year, people think about change. Those in unhappy marriages often start deciding in January. Internet searches regarding divorce surge by 50% in that month. By February many are meeting with attorneys. By March people are ready to file papers. Via The Huffington Post: The two groups tracked divorce filings across the U.S. from 2008 to 2011 and found that divorces spike in January, continue to rise and then reach an eventual…
1 min read
What do the best stock traders have in common?
bsp; They communicate the most. Via Imagine: How Creativity Works: ...the best traders were the most connected, and people who carried on more IM conversations and sent more messages also made more money. (While typical traders generated profits on only 55 percent of their trades, those who were extremely plugged in profited on more than 70 percent of their stock trades.) “These are the guys who get embedded in multiple chats,” Uzzi says. “They’re just sucking up information from everybody else,…
2 minutes
5 things you can tell about someone just by looking at their face:
st by looking at someone's face you have a better than average chance of determining: if they are smart. if they are a Nobel Peace Prize winner or a serial killer. if a woman is a lesbian. if they are a Republican or Democrat. if a man is trustworthy. Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.
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