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‘Weapons of persuasion’ from Robert Cialdini
Los Angeles Times: Mitt Romney on the stump, singles at the bar, car salesmen on the lot: All sorts of people are practicing the art of persuasion, with varying degrees of success. We like to think that we make our own decisions, that we're in control. But we're all open to persuasion by others, says Robert Cialdini, professor emeritus of psychology at Arizona State University and author of "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion." Humans have been testing their own trial-and-error persuasion techniques forever, Cialdini says. Now, for better or worse, the professionals are moving in.
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Turned off: Families come together in unplugging technology
Green Bay Press Gazette: Imagine what you could accomplish if you stopped using the Internet, other forms of social media or the television for a short period of time or even a summer. There’d be time to focus on family, get involved in outdoor activities or just maybe write a book. That’s exactly what happened last summer when Kathy and Jason Schipper and their four children decided to unplug for four months. The decision came after a night of social media overload in their Town of Center home. “One night in the family room, Jason and I looked at each other and every single person was in the family room. The TV was on and Jason was watching it,” Kathy Schipper said.
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Study: Moody Toddlers Could End Up as Compulsive Gamblers
Education Week: Is your 3-year-old overly cranky, impulsive and restless? If the answer is yes, you could be raising a future gambler. So says a new study published recently in the journal Psychological Science that found a correlation between so-called "under-controlled" temperament in preschoolers and compulsive gambling later in life. The study's researchers say their results suggest it may be possible to determine as early as age 3 whether a person is at increased risk of becoming a gambler, according to psychologist Wendy S. Slutske of the University of Missouri, Columbia. Slutske conducted the study along with Terrie E.
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Give Affect Science, Get Positive Emotion
A report from the 2012 Science & Engineering Festival WASHINGTON -- “Oh, I’m so glad that we found you!” one mother exclaimed as she and her young daughter approached the Affective Science Institute’s booth at last weekend’s U.S. Science and Engineering Festival on the National Mall. I started to tell her that one basic ingredient of emotion is called affect.
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Week in Ideas
The Wall Street Journal: Psychology Fast and Furious Could the hectic pace of modern life be spurring people to make risky choices? Researchers tested the effects of "thought speed" on appetite for risk. First, three dozen students read sentences aloud, at either twice their ordinary speed or half that speed, setting the pace for the brain. Then each participant played a computer simulation, getting five cents each time he or she pumped air into a balloon but losing the money if too much air went in and the balloon popped. People who had read quickly were more aggressive, attempting (and achieving) more pumps but also popping more balloons.
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Study of the Day: Social Inequality May Foster Distrust, Cheating in School
The Atlantic: PROBLEM: It's unclear which factors influence how dishonest people. Does the tendency to cheat lie in people's genes or psychological makeup? Or are environmental factors more to blame? METHODOLOGY: To uncover the roots of academic dishonesty, Queen's University researcher Lukas Neville looked into state-level data from Google searches made between 2003 and 2011 for phrases like "free term paper," "buy term paper," and the names of cheating websites. He compared these to statistics on income inequality and how trusting people are in each state.
