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Why Nagging Women and Silent Men Drive Each Other Crazy
The Huffington Post: In a recent episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (titled "Palestinian Chicken"), Larry makes a deal with his friend: Larry won't have to pay for the damage he made to his friend's car as long as he tells his friend's critical, nagging wife how annoying it is when she says "LOL." Why the deal? Larry's friend is scared to death of his wife and thinks Larry is the man for the job. He admires Larry's willingness to always say the first thing on his mind and speak up for himself. In the parlance of psychological science, Larry is off-the-charts blirtatious and his friend is off-the-charts not.
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Entscheidungsfreiheit macht unfrei
ORF Austria: Wie in kaum einem anderen Land ist in den USA der Glaube verbreitet, dass man selbst des Glückes Schmied ist. Das gilt auch für Amerikanerinnen, die mittlerweile mehrheitlich davon überzeugt sind, dass sie am Arbeitsplatz nicht diskriminiert werden. Wie eine Studie zeigt, kann genau dieser Glaube zur Aufrechterhaltung von Karrierehürden für Frauen beitragen. Die Psychologinnen Nicole Stephens von der Northwestern University und Cynthia Levine von der University of Stanford befragten 117 Frauen, die aus dem Berufsleben ausgeschieden waren, zu ihrem Entscheidungsspielraum zwischen Kind und Beruf.
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Don’t copycat an unpopular boss’s behavior, study reminds
MSNBC: Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but mindless mimicry can also make you look like a jerk. That’s the gist of a new study on empathetic body language that will appear in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science. In social situations, people tend to mirror one another as an unconscious show of rapport. Find yourself on a successful first date, for example, and you will often lean in at the same times during conversation. And though most mirroring is done unintentionally, some adopt it as a subtle psychological strategy for closing sales and acing big job interviews. That said, clueless copycatting may be costly.
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Eating fatty foods make people feel happier, less lonely, studies show
The New York Daily News: Stress eaters might reach for the pint of ice cream when they're feeling sad, but not because it tastes good. New research shows that fatty foods act as mood-lifters regardless of what they taste like, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation last week. Being delicious is just an extra bonus. Conducted out of the University of Leuven in Belgium, 12 healthy, nonobese subjects were hooked up to gastric feed tubes and unknowingly given either a fatty-acid solution or a saline solution, AFP RelaxNews reported. Subjects were then exposed to sad or neutral music and images and asked to report how they were feeling.
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Research: The Emotions of Aid
Stanford Social Innovation Review: “One death is a tragedy; 1 million is a statistic,” Joseph Stalin is supposed to have said. The more people we see suffering, the less we care. It’s an unfortunate quirk that psychologists so far have blamed on our brains: Humans are tuned to individuals, the thinking goes; we are just not capable of feeling compassion for whole groups. A new study calls that comfortable conclusion into question. “The collapse of compassion is an active process,” says Daryl Cameron, a doctoral candidate in social psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “It’s not some passive limitation on human experience.
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Mirroring reflects poorly in job interviews, study finds
The Toronto Star: Be prepared, wear a suit and remember to smile. And now another tip for job interviews: cut out the mirroring. A study in the upcoming issue of Psychological Science suggests matching your interviewer’s demeanour and mannerisms isn’t a solid strategy, particularly if a third party is there to see it. “Mimicry is a crucial part of social intelligence,” co-author Piotr Winkielman said in a release from the University of California, San Diego. “But it is not enough to simply know how to mimic.
