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An Office for Introverts
The Atlantic: Open offices were supposed to liberate us from cubicle-land. In the 1960s, the German design group Quickborner decided that grouping desks together would increase efficiency and de-emphasize status. They dubbed it Bürolandschaft, or “office landscape." Open plans are also meant to enhance collaboration: Perhaps overhearing your colleague's every mutter will lead to some serendipitous insights. ("Eureka! Steve, too, can't get Twitter to load.") But we've long since entered the backlash phase. "A cost-effective panopticon,"sneered one commenter on the tech site Y Combinator.
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Stand Up for Better Meetings
In the wake of recent studies showing the health consequences of prolonged sitting, many professionals have begun standing at their work stations, and even in meetings. New research shows that eschewing a chair has a profound effect on group productivity. Standing during meetings boosts the excitement around creative group processes and reduces people's tendency to defend their turf, according to the study. Behavioral researchers Andrew Knight and Markus Bauer of Washington University wanted to explore the group dynamics that arose in meetings without chairs. They designed an experiment in which participants work in teams for 30 minutes to develop and record a university recruitment video.
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Minimizing Belief in Free Will May Lessen Support for Criminal Punishment
Exposure to information that diminishes free will, including brain-based accounts of behavior, seems to decrease people’s support for retributive punishment, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. People who learned about neuroscientific research, either by reading a magazine article or through undergraduate coursework, proposed less severe punishment for a hypothetical criminal than did their peers. The findings suggest that they did so because they saw the criminal as less blameworthy.
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Roughhousing Lessons From Dad
The Wall Street Journal: There is no question among researchers that fathers who spend time with their children instill self-control and social skills in their offspring. Exactly how dads do that, however, is largely a mystery. Thousands of studies have sliced and diced the benefits for children of a close, nurturing bond with Mom. Researchers have a harder time analyzing the ways fathers interact with children, such as rough-and-tumble play. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
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Science Explains The Enduring Appeal Of Bland, Symmetrical Layouts
Fast Company: From a literary standpoint, the New Yorker is one of the most engaging publications out there. From a design standpoint, the print magazine seems to embrace the idea that less is more. It's common for full pages of text to flow through three symmetrical columns with few, if any, visual interruptions. Some might say there's a minimal elegance to the style, others might call it a little monotonous, but everyone would agree that it emphasizes words over their presentation. Whether the magazine realizes it or not, these two hallmarks--engaging stories and symmetrical monotony--might not be as unconnected as they appear.
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Literally Touching Greatness Can Increase Your Creativity
Pacific Standard: Do you wish you were more creative? Would it help if you played Mozart’s piano, sat down at Dickens’ writing desk, or switched on Steve Jobs’ laptop? If you’re the sort of logic-driven person who answered “Of course not,” then, no, it wouldn’t. But if your way of processing information is more intuitive, it just might. That’s the implication of newly published research, which finds handling an object previously used by a highly innovative person can boost the creative output of some individuals, apparently by elevating their confidence level.
