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An Ill-Timed Smile Can Hurt You in Negotiations
Smiling can be a disarming expression on a date or at a social gathering. But in the boardroom, it could prove perilous. A new psychological study examines how the interpretation of facial expressions can impact economic decision making in a business setting. "A business person in a negotiation should be careful about managing his or her emotions because the person across the table is making inferences based on facial expressions," said Peter Carnevale, professor of management and organization at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business. "For example, a smile at the wrong time can discourage cooperation." The study—a joint project between Carnevale and Celso M.
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Chopping the Cherry Tree: How Kids Learn Honesty
Back in the 90s, in the midst of the so-called culture wars, Republican moralist William Bennett published a hefty collection of stories and fables and poems called the Book of Virtues. The bestselling volume extolled timeless values like courage and compassion and honesty. At the same time, Herbert Kohl and Colin Greer authored an anthology called A Call To Character, which also used stories to promote a somewhat different set of timeless values. The dueling miscellanies represented a fundamental and acrimonious division over how to raise and instruct the next generation of American citizens.
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You Feel Closer to Your Destination Even When You’re Not
Pacific Standard: If there’s one thing science is good at, it’s showing us how things we do every day affect the way we think and feel about the world in ways we’d never imagine. Take, for example, moving around. You probably wouldn’t expect the simple act of getting closer or further away from a place changes your perspective on that place very much, if at all. But, according to a new study, it totally does. Sam Maglio and Evan Polman, of the University of Toronto and University of Wisconsin-Madison, respectively, recently hit the streets of Toronto and Vancouver and interviewed pedestrians at strategically chosen subway stops, crosswalks, and a mall.
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Delay That’s in Our DNA
The Wall Street Journal: If your first impulse is to put off reading this column, your parents may be the reason. But read it anyway, because impulsiveness and procrastination so often go hand in hand. In a new paper, researchers at the University of Colorado have found that each of the two traits is nearly half heritable, with no genetic factors unique to either trait alone. They go together, in other words, like peanut butter and jelly. The connection may sound counterintuitive, since at first blush impulsiveness seems like the opposite of procrastination. The former, after all, involves acting rashly, while the latter is about irrational delay.
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Our Gullible Brains
The Atlantic: Can a person be bright? Cold? Soft? Sweet? When the psychologists Solomon Asch and Harriet Nerlove posed these questions to a group of 3- and 4-year-olds in 1960, the response, on the whole, was skeptical. “Poor people are cold because they have no clothes,” one child said. By second or third grade, though, children could understand the psychological meanings of these so-called double-function terms and how they relate to the physical world [1]. “Embodied cognition” is a subset of psychological research that explores the way physical sensations can evoke abstract concepts. Take warmth, for example.
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Cliven Bundy, Donald Sterling, and the Science of Moral Judgments
Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy are the latest in a long line of public figures — Paula Deen, Mel Gibson, Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson — whose remarks have drawn accusations of racism. In all of these cases, words are receiving much more attention than deeds. Sterling’s remarks about Blacks are receiving far more attention than his alleged discriminatory behavior against African American and Latino tenants at apartment buildings he owns. For more than 20 years, Bundy has refused to pay fees for the cattle he has been grazing on federally owned lands, arguing that he does not recognize the existence of the US government.