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How to Defeat the Impulse Buy
The New York Times: As Thanksgiving approaches, so does the holiday shopping season. Once again, a day traditionally meant to celebrate gratitude will inaugurate a month of rampant consumerism. As a psychologist who studies decision making, I’m acutely aware that marketers know how the mind works, and they aren’t hesitant to use that knowledge to stoke consumers’ desires and lessen their self-control. Tactics emphasizing scarcity (“only 10 televisions at this price in stock”) and delayed cost (“0 percent interest until 2016”) are employed to great effect.
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Taking Notes May Impede Your Ability to Remember Stuff
Entrepreneur: We take notes because we want to remember all kinds of stuff: A niece's birthday, the answer to a test question, what to buy at the grocery store, etc. etc. But a new study published in the journal Memory & Cognition suggests that instead of enhancing our memory, writing stuff down actually makes us more forgetful because we know we can just look at our notes later. In the study, researchers had participants play multiple rounds of Concentration (the game where you need to remember the identity and location of pairs of cards in order to match them).
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Can Absence Make the Mind Grow Fonder?
The Atlantic: Of our modern marketplace, The Economist wrote: "Choice seduces the modern consumer at every turn." But what happens when we stop consuming something? Does that make us want it more? Or less? The question of whether something becomes more attractive the less you have of it depends on many factors. Having access to a favorite thing (for me, that'd be tomato soup) usually doesn't decrease someone's desire for it. Xianchi Dai and Ayelet Fishbach are authors ofa new study on this seemingly simple question: "When a product becomes temporarily unavailable, does desire for it increase or decrease over time?" The gut reaction to reading that statement is probably: Yes!
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How Long Will You Live? Ask Your Friends.
The Huffington Post: When actor James Gandolfini died in the summer of 2013, at age 51, a prominent cardiologist described him as "a heart attack waiting to happen." The award-winning Sopranos star was overweight and inactive, and on the evening he died, he had indulged himself in a diet of rum, beer and fatty foods. In short, he didn't take care of himself, and this lack of self-discipline no doubt contributed to his untimely death. Scientists have long known that personality is a good indicator of future health and mortality.
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New Research From <em>Clinical Psychological Science</em>
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: Iris M. Engelhard, Miriam J. J. Lommen, and Marit Sijbrandij Are perceptions of growth after a trauma adaptive or maladaptive for trauma survivors? Infantry soldiers in the Royal Netherlands Army completed personality assessments before a 4-month deployment in Iraq. Five months and 15 months after their return, the soldiers completed measures of trauma, posttraumatic growth, and PTSD symptoms. Greater perceived growth 5 months postdeployment was associated with greater levels of posttraumatic stress 15 months postdeployment, even after controlling for levels of posttraumatic stress at the 5-month time point.
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Preventing Job Turnover By Identifying What Makes People “Seekers” or “Stayers”
The days of having employees who stick with one job for their entire career may be over. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American employee will stay in their current job for around 5 years and will hold an average of 11 different jobs by the time they’re in their fifties. But replacing employees is often time consuming and expensive for organizations. One strategy to help cut down on employee turnover is to better identify the factors that influence an employee’s decision to stay put or look for greener pastures elsewhere. In a recent study published in the Journal of Business and Psychology, psychological scientists Sang Eun Woo of Purdue University and David G.
