Can you tell if someone is good at their job just by watching them for 6 seconds?
e accuracy of strangers' consensual judgments of personality based on "thin slices" of targets' nonverbal behavior were examined in relation to an ecologically valid criterion variable. In the 1st study, consensual judgments of college teachers' molar nonverbal behavior based on very brief (under 30 sec) silent video clips significantly predicted global end-of-semester student evaluations of teachers. In the 2nd study, similar judgments predicted a principal's ratings of high school teachers. In the 3rd study, ratings of even thinner slices (6…
1 min read
Does medical school reduce empathy?
RPOSE: Empathy is a key element of patient-physician communication that is relevant to and positively influences patients' health. The authors systematically reviewed the literature to investigate changes in trainee empathy and reasons for those changes during medical school and residency. METHOD: The authors conducted a systematic search of studies concerning trainee empathy published from January 1990 to January 2010, using manual methods and the PubMed, EMBASE, and PsycINFO databases. They independently reviewed and selected quantitative and qualitative studies for inclusion.…
2 minutes
How to beat procrastination quickly:
a Merlin Mann: My favorite tonic for procrastination—which I have mentioned in passing previously—is what I call a dash, which is simply a short burst of focused activity during which you force yourself to do nothing but work on the procrastinated item for a very short period of time—perhaps as little as just one minute. By breaking a few tiny pebbles off of your perceived monolith, you end up psyching yourself out of your stupor, as well as making much-needed progress on your…
1 min read
Should you wear red if you’re an athlete?
ve posted before about whether the color red has magic powers. Of course, I don't really believe it has magic powers but it does seem to have interesting effects in a number of areas, including sports. Almost universally, red means stop. Red means danger. Red means hot. And analyzing the results in the 2004 Olympics, researchers have found that red also means dominance. Athletes wearing red prevailed more often than those wearing blue, especially in hand-to-hand sports like wrestling. Source…
2 minutes
Can you tell if someone is rich by a quick glance?
s. They're the ones who don't seem to be paying attention: Socioeconomic status (SES) is a primary determinant of health vulnerabilities and social affiliations. To ascertain if SES is signaled in brief patterns of nonverbal behavior, we had participants of varying SES backgrounds engage in a brief interaction with a stranger. Videos of 60-s slices of these interactions were coded for nonverbal cues of disengagement and engagement, and estimates of participants' SES were provided by naive observers who viewed these…
1 min read
How To Quickly Increase Confidence And Self-Esteem:
what mom told you and sit up straight: Building on the notion of embodied attitudes, we examined how body postures can influence self-evaluations by affecting thought confidence, a meta-cognitive process. Specifically, participants were asked to think about and write down their best or worse qualities while they were sitting down with their back erect and pushing their chest out (confident posture) or slouched forward with their back curved (doubtful posture). Then, participants completed a number of measures and reported…
1 min read
Is there an easy way to increase insight and creativity?
ile: When we're nervous our attention tends to narrow. We stop noticing what's going on around the edges and only see what's right in front of us. This is true in both a literal and a metaphorical sense: when nervous or stressed we're less likely to notice ideas that are at the edge of our consciousness. But to gain insight into a problem, it's often precisely these peripheral ideas we need. Cue a smile. Smiling makes us feel good which…
1 min read
How to make sure you don’t choke under pressure:
e tips in this New York Times article were for golfers but I think the underlying ideas can be applied to most anything: Beilock suggested that golfers play games for small change with their friends on the practice putting green. If practicing alone, she said, a golfer ought to put some sort of incentive on the task, like promising to make 10 3-footers in a row before going home. “Anything that holds you to the consequences of not succeeding will…
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