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Take a chance on me
The Boston Globe: IF YOU DON’T think there are many people to date in your area, be careful not to put all your eggs in one basket. In a new study, both men and women who were led to think that there were fewer members of the opposite sex in the population were subsequently more willing to choose a risky lottery ticket bet, less willing to diversify stock market or retirement investments, and more willing to have the government concentrate its vaccine research funding in one company. This seems to reflect a natural instinct to take bigger risks for bigger rewards in hope of securing a mate. Read the whole story: The Boston Globe
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Fewer Romantic Prospects May Lead to Riskier Investments
Encountering information suggesting that it may be tough to find a romantic partner shifts people’s decision making toward riskier options, according to new findings from a series of studies published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Environmental cues indicating that one will have a relatively difficult time finding a mate can drive people to concentrate their investment choices into a few high-risk, high-return options,” says psychological scientist Joshua Ackerman of the University of Michigan, lead author on the research.
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How Not to Explain Success
The New York Times: DO you remember the controversy two years ago, when the Yale law professors Amy Chua (author of “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”) and Jed Rubenfeld published “The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America”? We sure do. As psychologists, we found the book intriguing, because its topic — why some people succeed and others don’t — has long been a basic research question in social science, and its authors were advancing a novel argument.
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What Happened to Jordan Spieth?
Inc.: Here's how it happens, and how you can deal with it. Our brains are structured so that when we have practiced something really well, we no longer need to think about it. Our subconscious processing systems are at work. But when we slow down to focus on our automatic actions, we screw up the processes, and tie ourselves in knots. Jordan Spieth choked on the 12th hole at Augusta, not when he hit his first ball into the creek, but when he hit his second. Psychologist Sian L.
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4 Ways to Be a Better Arguer
Scientific American Mind: My family is what you might call politically diverse, with members ranging from real pinko-commie hippies to paranoid right-wing conspiracy theorists—and we're all connected on Facebook. This election year, things among us had gotten pretty acrimonious until my brother, Colin, did something ingenious: he made a pledge to stop talking politics on Facebook. In the middle of a heated argument, it's tough to picture everything working out well in the end with your opponent. Yet remaining hopeful may actually help that happen, says Susan Krauss Whitbourne, a personality researcher and professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
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Let’s Get Lunch! Group Meals Spur Cooperation
Getting people from diverse backgrounds to work together smoothly is one of the biggest challenges organizations face. One of the easiest ways to encourage employees to cooperate may be as easy as pie – or, maybe that sandwich place around the corner. Companies that invest in an inviting cafeteria or shared meal space may be getting a particularly good return on their investment, according to new research from Cornell University. To find out how group meals go on to influence team cooperation within organizations, psychological scientist Brian Wansink and colleagues designed their study around a group known for sharing meals on the job: firefighters.
