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Public display of disaffection
Macleans: Last June, Kevin Newman delivered the commencement address at the University of Western Ontario. Reading from his iPad, the veteran TV news journalist extolled social media’s increasing role in shaping global events—and how it’s destined to make the graduating class “the most consequential generation in more than a century.” Afterwards, the 52-year-old, who received an honorary doctorate at the ceremony, took his seat on the dais and began typing into his iPhone. Once, in the paleolithic pre-Facebook era, a guest of honour displaying such distracted behaviour would have summoned dismayed cocked eyebrows. But if the university’s robed dignitaries were offended, they showed no sign.
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Attractive individuals may be penalized for good looks
National Post: It isn’t easy being beautiful — at least, not all the time. Two new studies have identified a surprising penalty for good looks, with implications for professional and personal settings alike. Researchers from Germany find the well-known beauty bias is actually flipped when attractive job candidates are appraised by a same-sex evaluator. Researchers from the U.S., separately, show a similarly negative effect when good-looking people have their apologies judged by their own gender. “There are a lot of studies that show attractive people make more money, are more likely to get hired and get lighter sentences in court when they’re convicted of crimes.
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What Happens to Us When We Feel Powerless
The Huffington Post: Control is an important aspect of our psychological well-being. Many of the most frustrating situations in life involve cases where events are happening around you, and you have no say in how they turn out. Patients suffering from significant illnesses must come to grips with the lack of control they have over their disease. Low-level employees in a business may be frustrated by their inability to control their work day. An interesting paper in the August, 2011 issue of Psychological Science by Ena Inesi, Simona Botti, David Dubois, Derek Rucker and Adam Galinsky examines two sources of control in our lives: choice and power.
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Something for the weekend
Financial Times: We are all familiar with the pain of rejection - not being invited to a party, or being excluded in a conversation. Now a psychology academic and an assistant professor of management and organisation have examined the impact of social rejection. They have concluded that even if individuals are sympathetic to the social snubs experienced by another, they do not understand how upset the person concerned actually feels.
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Hanging up on home phones
The Montreal Gazette: Ever find yourself wondering whether it's worth it to keep and, perhaps more importantly, pay for that home phone line? Even though a majority of Canadian homes have at least one cellphone, most are not completely abandoning their land lines. Statistics Canada says 78 per cent of Canadian households had cellphones in 2010, up from 74 per cent two years earlier. Households with land line phones stood at 67 per cent last year, down from 83 per cent in 2008. But the land line versus cellphone question is one many 20-something Canadians don't even ponder.
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Can Our Immune Systems Tell Us Who’s Sick?
Discovery News: The placebo effect relies on the mind's ability to influence the body, but does the same work in reverse? For instance, after being sick, can the body's immune system subconsciously tell us who's sick so we can avoid getting sick again? In one early analysis on the topic, researchers think it's certainly possible. The research, featured in the journal Psychological Science, suggests people who recently felt ill are primed to notice and avoid others who appear sick around them. In this sense, their biological immune systems and behavioral immune systems work together in some way to help avoid future illness.
