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Oprima dos for better cognition
The Economist: MANY people report feeling like different people when they speak a foreign language. I've been sceptical of these claims, since many of them seem to line up too neatly with national stereotypes: "I feel warmer and more relaxed in Spanish," "German makes me reason more carefully" and the like. But a new study seems to show that people really do think differently in a foreign language—any foreign language. Namely, people are less likely to fall into common cognitive traps when tested in a language other than their mother tongue. The study is “The Foreign-Language Effect: Thinking in a Foreign Tongue Reduces Decision Biases” by Boaz Keysar, Sayuri L.
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Is regifting really that bad?
Business Insider: The people who originally gave the gift are not nearly as offended as regifters think they'll be. Five studies investigate whether the practice of "regifting"-a social taboo-is as offensive to givers as regifters assume. Participants who imagined regifting thought that the original givers would be more offended than givers reported feeling, to such an extent that receivers viewed regifting as similar in offensiveness to throwing gifts away (whereas givers clearly preferred the former). This asymmetry in emotional reactions to regifting was driven by an asymmetry in beliefs about entitlement.
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Think in a foreign language for better work decisions
Today: Forget about business school. If you want to improve your business acumen, the best route may be to study a foreign language. University of Chicago researchers have found that people make more rational decisions when they think things through in a foreign language, according to a study published in Psychological Science. Normally people are loathe to risk what they have for the opportunity to make more. And because of that they will pass up attractive business opportunities, says the study’s lead author, Boaz Keysar, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago. Read the whole story: Today
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What You See Affects What You Can Do
The Huffington Post: It is tempting to think of our eyes as video cameras that take in information about the world and try to give us a reasonably accurate picture of what is going on in the outside world. Key arguments against this way of thinking about vision were made by JJ Gibson, who developed an ecological theory of how we perceive the world starting in the 1950s. His approach focused on asking what vision is for. He pointed out that the main function of vision is to help us perform actions in the world, and so our visual system should give us information that will help us to act effectively. That means that our goals can influence what we see.
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Survey: 1 in 4 users lie on Facebook
CNN: About one out of every four Facebook users lies on their profile, and not just to impress that guy or gal who wouldn't date them in high school. Sometimes, it's about privacy. That was one of the findings of a Consumer Reports investigation released this week. Titled "Facebook & Your Privacy," the report focuses on the ways people use the social-networking site to share information, and what happens to that information after they do. In a survey of 2,000 households, 25% of users said they falsified information in their profiles to protect their identity, Consumer Reports said. That's up from 10% in a similar survey two years ago.
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Creepy People Leave You Cold
Scientific American: Jack Nicholson, playing the crazed caretaker in The Shining, makes me reach for a blanket. Now a study finds that people we find, well, creepy can actually make us feel colder. The research will be published in the journal Psychological Science. [N. Pontus Leander, Tanya L. Chartrand and John A. Bargh, "You Give Me the Chills: Embodied Reactions to Inappropriate Amounts of Behavioral Mimicry"] Researchers interviewed 40 college undergraduates. During each interaction, the experimenter was either chummy with the student or very stiff and professional. The investigator also alternated between mimicking students’ posture—a signal of rapport—and not doing anything at all.
