Thinking Aloud Can Make You Smarter
w studies have examined the impact of age on reactivity to concurrent think-aloud (TA) verbal reports. An initial study with 30 younger and 31 older adults revealed that thinking aloud improves older adult performance on a short form of the Raven's Matrices (Bors & Stokes, 1998, Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58, p. 382) but did not affect other tasks. In the replication experiment, 30 older adults (mean age = 73.0) performed the Raven's Matrices and three other tasks to replicate…
1 min read
If you pig out at Thanksgiving are you less likely to impulse buy on Black Friday?
s. From Science Daily: ...research from two University of Utah marketing professors suggests how eating a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with turkey and mashed potatoes makes consumers less likely to buy on impulse, which might affect the outcome of their shopping on Black Friday, historically one of the busiest retail shopping days of the year... ..."We found that participants who had consumed a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with turkey displayed less willingness to buy deeply discounted products compared to those who did…
2 minutes
Does happiness boost productivity?
s: “Happiness economics” should not be just about whether macro-variables raise or lower well-being, we also need to look to the micro-level impact of happiness on behaviour. So far we know that happier individuals are more productive, the effect coming largely through increased effort, whether we consider a short-run shock induced in a laboratory or longer-run real-life shocks. Source is Daniel Sgroi. For the pointer I thank Robert Cottrell at The Browser. Join over 262,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.…
1 min read
How an office is decorated affects well-being and productivity
inciples of lean management encourage managers to exert tight control over office space and the people within it. Alternative, design-led approaches promote the value of offices that are enriched, particularly by plants and art. On the basis of a social identity perspective, we argue that both of these approaches may compromise organizational outcomes by disempowering workers and failing to give them input into the design of their office space. This hypothesis is tested in two experiments (ns = 112, 47).…
2 minutes
How long do you benefit from a vacation? What does it take to increase the duration?
is study adds to research on the beneficial effects of vacation to employees' well-being and on the fade-out of these effects. One hundred and thirty-one teachers completed questionnaires one time before and three times after vacationing. Results indicated that teachers' work engagement significantly increased and teachers' burnout significantly decreased after vacation. However, these beneficial effects faded out within one month. Applying hierarchical regression analyses, we investigated the fade-out of vacation effects in detail. In line with the Job Demands-Resources model,…
1 min read
When should you use self-deprecating humor?
en you're powerful: This study explores the adaptive functions and design features of self- and other-deprecating humor. Sixty-four female and 32 male college students participated in a two-part study. In the first part, we examined the relationships among participant demographics, personality traits, and preferences for producing different types of humor. Men report using more other-deprecating humor than women do, and the use of other-deprecating humor decreases with age for both sexes. In the second part of the study, each participant…
1 min read
This Is How Long It Takes You To Make Up Your Mind About Someone
0 milliseconds. People often draw trait inferences from the facial appearance of other people. We investigated the minimal conditions under which people make such inferences. In five experiments, each focusing on a specific trait judgment, we manipulated the exposure time of unfamiliar faces. Judgments made after a 100-ms exposure correlated highly with judgments made in the absence of time constraints, suggesting that this exposure time was sufficient for participants to form an impression. In fact, for all judgments—attractiveness, likeability, trustworthiness,…
1 min read
Can being happy make you less able to resist temptation?
investigate the interfering influence of elevated arousal on the impact of positive mood on resistance to temptation. Three studies demonstrate that when a temptation activates long‐term health goals, baseline positive mood facilitates resistance to temptation in (1) the choice between two snack items, one of which is more unhealthy, sinful, and hard to resist (M&Ms) than the other (grapes) and (2) the monitoring of consumption when the sinful option is chosen. However, this influence is attenuated when positive mood…
1 min read
