What does your choice of social networking site say about you?
cebook is more likely to be used to forge social ties and combat loneliness. Twitter is more about social procrastination. Via the excellent BPS Research Digest: People who used Facebook mostly for socialising tended to score more highly on sociability and neuroticism (consistent with past research suggesting that shy people use the site to forge social ties and combat loneliness). Social use of Twitter correlated with higher sociability and openness (but not neuroticism) and with lower scores on conscientiousness. This suggests…
2 minutes
Can being ranked by intelligence reduce your intelligence?
a Harvard Business Review: A group of participants suffered an average IQ drop of 17.4 points during an experiment in which they were ranked by their intelligence scores, suggesting that simply being ranked can profoundly diminish some people's ability to express their cognitive ability, says a team led by Read Montague of Virginia Tech. Not everyone in the experiment responded this way—some participants' scores even improved. Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: 10 ways to…
1 min read
What does your birth month say about you?
bsp; Potentially a lot. A piece in the LA Times covers a lot of research related to how birth month affects who we are. Winter births (Born Dec. 22 to March 20): More likely to be obese. Winter babies under 45 were more likely to be novelty-seekers. Oddly, those over 45 were less likely to chase the new. More likely to develop schizophrenia. Impressively, this has been confirmed in more than 200 studies. Spring births (Born March 21 to June…
1 min read
Are feminine women healthier?
men with feminine faces get sick less often. Interesting, because I've posted before that men with masculine faces have better immune systems too: The current study addressed whether rated femininity, attractiveness, and health in female faces are associated with numerous indices of self-reported health history (number of colds/stomach bugs/frequency of antibiotic use) in a sample of 105 females. It was predicted that all three rating variables would correlate negatively with bouts of illness (with the exception of rates of stomach…
1 min read
Is Russian culture really brooding and melancholy?
ssians showed increased attention to negative vs positive pictures, unlike Americans. Priming Russian symbols increased attention to negativity as well: This research provides experimental evidence for cultural influence on one of the most basic elements of emotional processing: attention to positive versus negative stimuli. To this end, we focused on Russian culture, which is characterized by brooding and melancholy. In Study 1, Russians spent significantly more time looking at negative than positive pictures, whereas Americans did not show this tendency.…
1 min read
What is manipulating you into spending too much money and what can you do to resist?
bsp; What our neighbors buy affects what we buy, as does our names, the weather, and the type of floor a store has. Music manipulates us into spending in flower shops and restaurants. Which products are next to each other on the shelf influences what we buy. In fact, one product can catch "cooties" from another. Attractive salespeople mess with our heads too, especially if they touch the products. Truth is, we're more satisfied after buying from good-looking people. Stores…
1 min read
What’s a trick for appearing more credible?
n't use round numbers. $524.66 sounds more sincere than $500. 1 hour and 13 minutes sounds more legit than 1 hour. Via Harvard Business Review: Consumers are more likely to believe that a company or product will deliver on its promise when the promise is conveyed in fine-grained rather than coarse units, the researchers say. A beard can help too. Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: 10 things you need to know about persuasion Things…
1 min read
Do men remember the bad? Do women focus on the good?
a Eurekalert: A woman's memory of an experience is less likely to be accurate than a man's if it was unpleasant and emotionally provocative, according to research undertaken by University of Montreal researchers at Louis-H Lafontaine Hospital. "Very few studies have looked at how 'valence' and 'arousal' affect memories independently of each other, that is to say, how attractive or repulsive we find an experience and how emotionally provocative it is," said corresponding author Dr. Marc Lavoie, of the university's…
1 min read
