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You’re Joking: Detecting Sarcasm in Emails Isn’t Easy
“Well, that meeting was a really fantastic use of my time.” You may want to think twice before hitting send on that email with a sarcastic joke – regardless of whether your boss or your work buddies are on the receiving end. New research investigating how we determine the emotional content of text is showing that people have a very hard time catching on to sarcasm in emails and texts. This means that written communications aren’t the best medium for making a well-meaning joke; people often interpret a friendly riff as being overtly negative, or they don’t catch the sarcastic tone at all and assume a caustic jibe is actually praise.
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People Prefer Hiring “Naturals” Over Hardworking “Strivers”
When deciding which candidate to hire or what company to invest in, do we favor someone who has a history of hard work and perseverance or the hotshot with a natural talent? Findings from three studies conducted by University College London professor Chia-Jung Tsay suggest that when assessing people with equivalent levels of achievement and success, we’re predisposed to judge someone who’s a “natural” as more talented, more hirable, and more likely to succeed than someone who’s a “striver.” “[T]here exists the belief that certain achievements cannot be explained solely by perseverance and hard work—that natural talent plays a role, and some ‘have it’ and others ‘do not,’” Tsay writes.
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The Right Music Can Bring Teams Together
A team researchers finds evidence that what we’re listening to at work might influence how willing we are to cooperate with coworkers.
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A Good Mood Is a Good Motivator
IYou need to alphabetize those files, transcribe last week’s meeting, and then look up some tax codes, but actually motivating yourself to take care of these tedious tasks can be a real challenge. According to new research from APS Fellow James J. Gross (Stanford University) and colleagues, people are much more likely to take on boring, unpleasant tasks when they’re in a good mood. Using a smartphone app to gather data, Gross and colleagues were able to monitor the moods of over 28,000 people in real time across an average of 27 days.
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Experience Buying and Selling Reduces Financially Costly Biases
When it comes to decisions about buying and selling, businesses are supposed to use evidence and observations about the market for goods to make profitable decisions. In classical economics, it’s assumed that people make financial decisions based on rational rules of thumb—buy low, sell high, diversify portfolios, that kind of thing. But the reality about how we make financial decisions appears to be much more complicated than simply assessing the rational value of goods.
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Dressing for Success: From Lucky Socks to the Red Sneaker Effect
Making a fashion statement at the office – a tie with an unusual pattern or some snazzy red sneakers paired with a suit – may actually provide a bit of a career boost. Under most circumstances, not conforming to etiquette rules tends to garner social disapproval; showing up to a business lunch in your gym clothes, for example, is not likely to impress your clients. However, Harvard psychological scientists Silvia Bellezza, Francesca Gino, and Anat Keinan hypothesized that intentionally standing out from the crowd could also send a positive message conveying status, confidence, and power.
