-
How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy
The New Yorker: No one joins Facebook to be sad and lonely. But a new study from the University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross argues that that’s exactly how it makes us feel. Over two weeks, Kross and his colleagues sent text messages to eighty-two Ann Arbor residents five times per day. The researchers wanted to know a few things: how their subjects felt overall, how worried and lonely they were, how much they had used Facebook, and how often they had had direct interaction with others since the previous text message.
-
An Honest Wage: Dollars, Hours and Ethics
In the nation’s capital this month, Mayor Vincent Gray vetoed legislation that would have forced large retailers to pay more than the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour. Gray was under pressure from Wal-Mart, which threatened not to expand operations in Washington if the so-called “living wage” bill were passed. Passionate debate on the issue has dominated the local news for months. This debate took me back to when I was a young man, working in a thread factory for $1.60 an hour. That was the minimum wage at the time, just raised from $1.40 the year before. I was a student, living on nothing, so I didn’t need a living wage.
-
Cheatin’ Hearts
Free market principles that serve as the cornerstone of many western economies may serve as a sturdy foundation for fraud and deception, a psychological study show.
-
The Perils of Being the Decider
Making business judgments, like forecasting the weather, always entails an element of uncertainty. Sound decision-making about when to spend capital – or, analogously, when to prepare for an incoming storm – requires assessing the degree of uncertainty and gauging whether the benefits outweigh the risks. Susan Joslyn, researcher at the University of Washington, studies how we make decisions when outcomes are unclear. In a recent article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Joslyn and co-author Jared LeClerc examine which factors lead to better (or worse) decision-making in uncertain situations.
-
Turns Out Your Kids Really Did Love That Music You Played
NPR: Way back in the 1980s, were you the one playing "When Doves Cry" over and over? Well, don't be surprised if your kids wind up doing the same thing. Young adults have strong positive memories of the music their parents loved when they were the same age, a study finds. That flies in the face of the cultural stereotype that children reject their parents' taste in music. Participants in a study on musical memory didn't just say they remembered and loved the music that was popular in the early '80s, when their parents were young. They also loved the music of the '60s, which their grandparents may have been blasting while changing Mom's diapers.
-
A Spouse’s Voice Rings Loudest in a Crowded Room
ABC News: You're at a crowded party, and two voices are competing for your attention: one from your spouse, the other from a stranger. Who are you most likely to hear? Your spouse, according to new research. So which voice are you most likely to ignore? Your spouse, but that depends on how long you have been married. If you are middle-aged, your spouse's voice is easier to hear, and easier to ignore. But the ability to ignore declines with age. That seemingly odd finding makes sense to Canadian researchers at Queen's University who put 23 married couples, ages 44 to 79, through 600 trials to explore how familiarity affects the human auditory system.
