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Who’s Wealthy? Beyond Net Worth, Asset and Debt Levels Change Our Perceptions
Will borrowing money to buy a new car make you feel richer? It depends on your net worth, says a new study in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science. “People’s perceptions of wealth vary not only as a function of their net worth, but also of the amount of assets and debt they have,” says Princeton University psychology graduate student Abigail B. Sussman, who wrote the study with Princeton professor Eldar Shafir. In fact, increasing your assets by taking on debt affects perceived wealth in opposite ways for people who are in the red (their debt outweighs their assets), or in the black (their assets outweigh their debt).
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Study finds drunken people aware of poor decisions
Toronto Star: A new study says that people who commit blunders while under the influence of alcohol know they’re doing it; they just don’t care. This means buzzed or drunken people who engage in embarrassing or harmful behaviour can’t blame it on not having control, said researcher Bruce Bartholow, associate professor of psychology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. While this isn’t the first study that shows alcohol alters the behaviour of those who consume it, “it’s the first to show they don’t care that they’re making mistakes,” said Bartholow, chief researcher on the study. Read the full story: Toronto Star
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Publication Bias (or, Why You Can’t Trust Any of the Research You Read)
Forbes: Researchers in Management and Strategy worry a lot about bias – statistical bias. In case you’re not such an academic researcher, let me briefly explain. Suppose you want to find out how many members of a rugby club have their nipples pierced (to pick a random example). The problem is, the club has 200 members and you don’t want to ask them all to take their shirts off. Therefore, you select a sample of 20 of them guys and ask them to bare their chests.
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Writing Things Down Can Actually Help You Lose Weight
NewsRadio 95: Could a pen and pad be more useful in weight loss than a barbell? A recent study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, found that women that wrote about what they valued the most, such as relationships, religion, or music, lost more weight than woman who didn’t write down their values. Christine Logel of Renison University College at the University of Waterloo, co-author of the study along with Geoffrey L. Cohen of Stanford University, said “We have this need to feel self-integrity. We can buffer that self-integrity by reminding ourselves how much we love our children for example,” she explained.
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Workzone: I know what he said, but what did he mean?
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Civil society demands a certain amount of diplomacy -- even if those rude co-workers in the comic strip "Dilbert" are pretty funny. But planes have crashed and patients have misunderstood diagnoses as a result of people being too polite. Indeed, the higher the stakes, the more polite people often get -- exacerbating the static that disrupts effective communication, according to an article published recently in a journal of the Washington, D.C.-based Association for Psychological Science.
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Be It Resolved
The New York Times: IT’S still early in 2012, so let’s be optimistic. Let’s assume you have made a New Year’s resolution and have not yet broken it. Based on studies of past resolutions, here are some uplifting predictions: 1) Whatever you hope for this year — to lose weight, to exercise more, to spend less money — you’re much more likely to make improvements than someone who hasn’t made a formal resolution. 2) If you can make it through the rest of January, you have a good chance of lasting a lot longer. 3) With a few relatively painless strategies and new digital tools, you can significantly boost your odds of success.
