Should we never trust economics majors?
hat did you major in at college?" might be a good questions for that next first date or before starting a business partnership. Economics majors were consistently: More likely to accept bribes Less inclined to pro-social behavior. More likely to free-ride in public-goods experiments. Offered less in ultimatum games. More likely to defect in prisoner's dilemma games. More likely to place profit over employee well-being in business simulations. Less likely to donate to charity. The abstract: A substantial body of…
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Is a Rocky training montage what you need to improve performance?
inking about what you have to do to prepare for a challenge was more likely to lead to success than imagining the victory. Via PsyBlog: Outcome and process have been put head-to-head experimentally by Pham and Taylor (1999) who had students either visualise their ultimate goal of doing well in an exam or the steps they would take to reach that goal, i.e. studying. The results were clear-cut. Participants who visualised themselves reading and gaining the required skills and knowledge,…
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Can Moneyball statistics be used to beat Jeopardy?
R covers the fascinating story of Roger Craig, a PhD in computer science, who used data-mining and statistics to make hundreds of thousands of dollars on Jeopardy: Using data-mining and text-clustering techniques, Craig grouped questions by category to figure out which topics were statistically common — and which weren't. "Obviously it's impossible to know everything," Jones says. "So he was trying to decide: What things did he need to know? He prepared himself in a way that I think is…
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How To Get People To Be More Honest With You
ght want to Skype more often. People lie more often via text message. We're more honest via video than we are in the other mediums tested -- including in face to face. Via Science Daily: Sending a text message leads people to lie more often than in other forms of communication, according to new research by David Xu, assistant professor in the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University. And I found this surprising: The authors then…
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How much should we trust others? What are the consequences of trusting too much or too little?
ople were asked how much they trust others on a scale of 1 to 10. Income peaked at those who responded with the number 8. Those with the highest levels of trust had incomes 7% lower than the 8's. Research shows they are more likely to be taken advantage of. Those with the lowest levels of trust had an income 14.5% lower than 8's. That loss is the equivalent of not going to college. They missed many opportunities by not…
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Nonverbally, what signifies dominance more than anything else?
ght want to stand up straight and get a taller chair if you're trying to appear powerful. Elevation wins by a landslide: Building on some concepts and methods recently introduced by Spiegel and Machotka, this investigation deals with four common nonverbal signifiers of social dominance: lateral opposition, precedence, posture (sitting and standing), and elevation. Our concern is to know how interdependent these signifiers may be and whether they are equally meaningful as indicators of dominance. An analysis of variance of…
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How to get through work today without killing anyone:
There are tricks for not procrastinating and being more productive. 2) Spend a little less time focusing on your performance and little more time trying to be happy. Happiness can boost productivity and lead to success. 3) It's not the work. It's how you perceive the work. Learn how to avoid stress. 4) Be nice, even to people you don't like. At the very least, go tit-for-tat. 5) Take it easy. Worrying about losing your job brings more unhappiness…
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Can gossip be a good thing?
finitely. It helps police bad behavior in a social network and relieves stress. Via Eurekalert: For centuries, gossip has been dismissed as salacious, idle chatter that can damage reputations and erode trust. But a new study from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests rumor-mongering can have positive outcomes such as helping us police bad behavior, prevent exploitation and lower stress. "Gossip gets a bad rap, but we're finding evidence that it plays a critical role in the maintenance of social…
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