Can trusting your feelings help you predict the future?
bsp; People who trusted their feelings more were better able to predict elections, movie box office results, the winner of American Idol, the stock market, college football, and the weather: Eight studies reveal an intriguing phenomenon: individuals who have higher trust in their feelings can predict the outcomes of future events better than individuals with lower trust in their feelings. This emotional oracle effect was found across a variety of prediction domains, including (a) the 2008 US Democratic presidential nomination,…
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Does music piracy help or hurt bands?
bsp; It helps big bands and hurts small bands: There is evidence that music piracy has differential effects on artists depending on their popularity. We present a model of music piracy with endogenous copying costs: consumers’ costs of illegal downloads increase with the scarcity of a recording and are therefore negatively related to the number of originals sold. Allowing for a second source of revenues apart from record sales, we show that piracy can hurt some artists while benefiting others.…
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5 things you didn’t know about smell:
search shows the smell of vanilla can reduce anxiety. A lavender scent in restaurants makes customers stay longer and spend more money. The blind don't have a more acute sense of smell than you do. They just pay more attention. Scents can affect which people you like. We can learn about someone's personality just by smelling them. "Clean" smells promote good behavior. The smell of cookies can make us nicer to one another too. Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly…
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5 things you didn’t know about the boss:
s, your boss is probably a narcissist. Some bosses are jerks because being abusive reduces stress. The most common reason bosses give pay raises is to retain good employees who are likely to leave. What's better than a big raise? Having a boss you trust. Your boss doesn't pay attention to what you say because people who feel powerful don't listen to anyone. There are ways to make a boss more attentive to feedback. There are tricks for detecting when…
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Would your life be dramatically improved if you were utterly deluded?
a Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom: ...evidence shows that people who hold pervasive positive illusions about themselves, their abilities, and their future prospects are mentally healthier, happier and better liked than people who lack such illusions. I've posted before about the multitude of benefits delusion can offer: People with positive illusions about their relationship are more satisfied, score higher on love and trust and have fewer problems. Overconfidence increases producitivity and improves teamwork. "Self-deception…
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Do the banner ads on websites have any effect on you?
u may not even realize it, but the more frequently you're exposed to a brand on those banners, the more your positive feelings for it can grow. Via Ars Technica: The research concludes that repeated exposure to a product via banner ads generates a positive feeling towards that product. The good news for consumers is that a critical reevaluation of the product can make these positive feelings vanish. There is a long history of experiments that show that repeated exposure…
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Is there a smell that makes you spend more in restaurants?
vender. Via PsyBlog: It was actually the relaxing scent of lavender that increased spending per person from 17.5 Euros to 21.1 Euros on average. That's a statistically significant 20% increase. Not a bad return on the investment of three electric fragrance diffusers. But unfortunately for all Gordon Ramsay wannabes, I have discovered a potentially fatal flaw in the plan. Not only did spending go up in the lavender condition, but so did the average amount of time spent in the…
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Do lies make your mouth dirty?
, but it can feel like they do. The connection between metaphorical and physical dirtiness goes much deeper than you might think. Research subjects who lied with their voice subsequently preferred mouthwash when picking among consumer products. People who lied via email (with their hands) preferred hand sanitizer. They were also willing to pay more for the product that cleansed the "dirty" part of their body. Lee and Schwarz (2010a) had participants complete a role-playing task in which they conveyed…
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