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Majority Doesn’t Care Whether Boss Is Male or Female
Forbes: It’s not all Devil Wears Prada out there in the workplace. A recent study showed that “fewer and fewer Americans care whether the boss is a man or a woman. A 1953 Gallup poll showed that 25% of participants had no preference for a male or female boss; by 1983, the number had risen to 36%, and by 2006, it was at 43%. A recent online survey of more than 60,000 people by Kim M. Elsesser of UCLA and Janet Lever of California State University shows that the proportion having no preference now stands at 54%. Read the full story: Forbes
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Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect When it Comes to Understanding Risk
People aren't very good at making decisions that involve risk. Many people are afraid of airplanes, although accidents are extremely rare; some people even drive to avoid flying, putting themselves at more risk. A new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, examines how people learn about risk and finds that practice does not make perfect.
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Liking yourself just the way you are
Los Angeles Times: You know it's tough out there when fashion and beauty executives think that even a model's body isn't good enough to sell clothes or that a celebrity's natural face isn't up to par, even with makeup. The website Jezebel reported in early December that Swedish retailing giant H&M featured images on its website of lingerie shown on "completely virtual" computer-generated bodies with real models' heads superimposed on top. Meanwhile the British Advertising Standards Authority banned two makeup ads in 2011 featuring Christy Turlington and Julia Roberts because they thought too much airbrushing made the ads misleading, and CoverGirl pulled a mascara ad after a U.S.
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Forget Being Grumpy…We Get Happier With Age
Express UK: Far from turning into grumpy old men and women, people become happier and more positive with age. Mature brains, as they age and lose memories, choose to retain happy ones and see the sunny side of life, according to a study. The over-50s also tended to cut out negative people from their life. Read the full story: Express UK
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People Mimic Each Other, But We Aren’t Chameleons
It’s easy to pick up on the movements that other people make—scratching your head, crossing your legs. But a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people only feel the urge to mimic each other when they have the same goal. It’s common for people to pick up on each other’s movements. “This is the notion that when you’re having a conversation with somebody and you don’t care where your hands are, and the other person scratches their head, you scratch your head,” says Sasha Ondobaka of the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
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Impatient? It May Hurt Your Credit Score
Forbes: Your propensity to wait (or not) is also reflected in your credit score, according to a study from researchers at Columbia and Stanford published online in Psychological Science. Patient people tend to have higher credit scores than those who just can’t wait. Participants who were the most willing to wait for the bigger payout had FICO scores that were roughly 30 points higher than those who were least willing to delay, the study found. Those who were the least willing to delay fell below the subprime credit score cutoff of 620, below which people generally pay much higher borrowing costs on credit cards and other loans. Read the full story: Forbes
