Does it help companies if their employees are friends?
present evidence on social incentives in the workplace, namely on whether workers’ behavior is affected by the presence of those they are socially tied to, even in settings where there are no externalities among workers due to either the production technology or the compensation scheme in place. To do so we combine data on individual worker productivity from a firm’s personnel records with information on each worker’s social network of friends in the firm. We find that compared to…
2 minutes
Your Phone Distracts You So Much You Won’t Notice Unicycling Clowns
don't do the studies, I just post them, folks: We investigated the effects of divided attention during walking. Individuals were classified based on whether they were walking while talking on a cell phone, listening to an MP3 player, walking without any electronics or walking in a pair. In the first study, we found that cell phone users walked more slowly, changed directions more frequently, and were less likely to acknowledge other people than individuals in the other conditions. In…
1 min read
Want to increase creativity and innovation? Get on a plane.
ile business surveys often find that managers prefer face-to-face communication for negotiating deals and selling their product, there is reason to believe that face-to-face meetings are particularly important for the transfer of technology, because technology is best explained and demonstrated in person. This paper examines the role of inward business travelers in raising a country's rate of innovation by looking at business travel from the United States to seventy-four other countries during the years 1993-2003. We find that international business…
1 min read
Are there too many psychopaths in corporate America?
, this isn't going to be some anti-capitalist, internet crank rant. Not all psychopaths are running around stabbing people. Some are quite successful: Despite increasing interest in psychopathy research, surprisingly little is known about the etiology of non-incarcerated, successful psychopaths. This review provides an analysis of current knowledge on the similarities and differences between successful and unsuccessful psychopaths derived from five population sources: community samples, individuals from employment agencies, college students, industrial psychopaths, and serial killers. An initial neurobiological model…
2 minutes
Is an attractive person touching an item enough to make you want to buy it?
is research examines the impact of attractiveness on consumers during a consumption experience. Specifically, it examines the effects of an attractive social influence in the context of touching and contamination of store products by investigating how consumers respond when they see attractive others touching the same products they want to purchase. In doing so, it provides the first experimental evidence of a positive contagion effect in either the marketing or the psychology literature. Across three field experiments using an actual…
1 min read
Being Prideful Makes You More Likeable
is experiment examined the ability of pride to serve as an adaptive emotion within the context of social interaction. After an in vivo induction of pride or a neutral state, participants engaged in a group problem-solving task. In contrast to a conventional view that pride is often associated with negative interpersonal outcomes, results confirmed that proud individuals not only took on a dominant role within the group problem-solving task, but also were perceived as the most likeable interaction partners. These…
1 min read
Here’s What Makes A Good Gift, According To Research
you're trying to apologize to someone, expensive gifts work: The present study examined a costly signaling model of human apology. The model assumes that an unintentional transgressor is more motivated to restore the relationship with the victim than an intentional transgressor who depreciates the relationship. The model predicts the existence of a separating equilibrium, in which only sincere apologizers will pay a certain cost to restore the relationship, while dishonest apologizers will not. Accordingly, we hypothesized that the receivers…
3 minutes
What’s worse: losing your job or being afraid of losing your job?
..perceived job insecurity ranks as one of the most important factors in employees' well-being and can be even more harmful than actual job loss with subsequent unemployment." This paper analyzes the impact of job insecurity perceptions on individual well-being. In contrast to previous studies, we explicitly take into account perceptions about both the likelihood and the potential costs of job loss and demonstrate that most contributions to the literature suffer from simultaneity bias. When accounting for simultaneity, we find the…
1 min read
