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Why Your Office Isn’t Doing You Any Favors
The business world is not known for being warm and fuzzy, but new research demonstrates that the workplace really can stifle generous behavior. “In five studies, using both attitudinal and behavioral measures, we consistently found that people primed to think of themselves in an organizational context (e.g., co-worker) felt less motivated to reciprocate, and did reciprocate than those in an otherwise parallel personal (e.g., friend or acquaintance) situation,” writes Stanford University researchers Peter Belmi and Jeffrey Pfeffer. Previous research has shown that reciprocation is a strong, and often automatic, social norm.
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Studies Suggest Multilingual Exposure Boosts Children’s Communication Skills
NPR: NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Katherine Kinzler, associate professor of psychology and human development at Cornell University, about her research into the social skills developed by children raised in multilingual environments versus monolingual environments. Read the whole story: NPR
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Most people aren’t resilient to life’s hardships, researchers find
Quartz: Previous research has found that, when faced with a negative life event, most people fare well when left well alone. Studies found that, after divorce, unemployment, or the death of a spouse, the majority of people proved resilient, maintaining stable high life satisfaction scores before and after each event. But these findings have been questioned in a paper published in Perspectives on Psychological Science this month. ... Co-author Frank Infurna told Science Daily that it shows it can be far better to intervene and help people cope with negative life events.
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Watching Cat Videos at Work Could Make You More Productive
TIME: Go ahead and watch that supercut of cats freaking out when they see a cucumber one more time: Scientists say it could make you more productive at work. In a paper for the Journal of Business and Psychology, an Australian study found that when experiment subjects were given a boring job to do, then exposed to something funny, they worked twice as long as subjects who watched videos about nature or business management. Read the whole story: TIME
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If You Set High Expectations For Your Marriage, Is It Doomed?
NPR: Psychologists disagree on whether expecting your marriage to be a deeply fulfilling relationship makes it more likely that the union will thrive, or that it will doom you to disappointment. So, psychologists, should we just go ahead and expect the worst after the honeymoon? Only if that matches your capacity to deliver on expectations, according to a study published Wednesday in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin with the deflating title, "Should Spouses Be Expecting Less From Marriage?" Read the whole story: NPR
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Lean In to Crying at Work
The Atlantic: When the president of CBS News fired correspondent Mika Brzezinski a decade ago, she cried. And she regrets it. “There was no place for those tears in that moment,” she told the Huffington Post two years ago. “If anything, when you cry, you give away power.” Of the 15 other high-profile women the news site interviewed about crying at work, the majority expressed negative views of some sort. Frances Hesselbein, former CEO of the Girl Scouts, put it most bluntly: “Tears belong within the family.” ... When women encounter these “problem situations” and react with overt anger, they are often punished for it.
