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The Seduction of a Sunny Day: How Weather Biases Car Buying Behavior
An analysis of 40 million car sales reveals the weather on the day of purchase can bias buyers towards choosing a car they may later regret.
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Richeson, Behrmann Cohen, Dell, and Baillargeon Elected to NAS
APS Past Board Member Jennifer A. Richeson and APS Fellows Marlene Behrmann Cohen and Gary S. Dell have been elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences (NAS). APS Fellow Renée Baillargeon has been elected as a Foreign Associate of NAS. NAS announced the election of 84 new members and 21 foreign associates on April 28. Scientists are elected to NAS on the basis of “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.” Jennifer A. Richeson is a professor of psychology and African American studies at Northwestern University. She studies how belonging to different social groups (e.g., racial, class, and gender groups) impacts behavior, thoughts, and emotions.
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Two Hormones Predict Negotiators’ Success
New research recently published in Psychological Science demonstrates that two hormones can exert a strong influence over a bargainer’s success in a negotiation: testosterone and the stress hormone cortisol. Testosterone is often associated with aggressive behavior, so we might assume that the more testosterone the better when it comes to the bargaining table. However, driving a hard bargain is about more than maximizing your earnings; negotiators also have to worry about how their economic goals might conflict with their social ones. Being too financially aggressive in a negotiation can put a strain on the social relationship between a buyer and seller.
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Children Exposed to Multiple Languages May Be Better Natural Communicators
Young children who hear more than one language spoken at home become better communicators, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Researchers discovered that children from multilingual environments are better at interpreting a speaker’s meaning than children who are exposed only to their native tongue. The most novel finding is that the children do not even have to be bilingual themselves; it is the exposure to more than one language that is the key for building effective social communication skills.
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Self-Promoters Tend to Misjudge How Annoying They Are to Others
Bragging to coworkers about a recent promotion, or posting a photo of your brand new car on Facebook, may seem like harmless ways to share good news. But new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that self-promotion or a “humblebrag” often backfires. Researchers Irene Scopelliti, George Loewenstein, and Joachim Vosgerau wanted to find out why so many people frequently get the trade-off between self-promotion and modesty wrong. They found that self-promoters overestimate how much their self-promotion elicits positive emotions and underestimate how much it elicits negative emotions.
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Third International Conference on Cognitive Hearing Science for Communication
The Third International Conference on Cognitive Hearing Science for Communication will be held June 14–17, 2015, in Linkoping, Sweden. For more information visit www.chscom2015.se.
