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Bosses Spend More Personal Time on Social Media Than Subordinates
Walk by any employee’s work station on a given day and you may see that person quickly closing a Facebook or Twitter page from his or her computer desktop. No one wants to get caught tweeting or posting Instagram pictures when they’re supposed to be working. But studies indicate that four out of five employees now use social media for personal use during working hours. A Norwegian study, however, shows that managers and executives, while critical of employees’ social media use at work, spend more time using social media during office hours than do their subordinates.
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Drug Use Linked with Brain Differences in Teens
LiveScience: Teens who have used drugs even just once in their lives have brain characteristics that are different from those who have never used drugs, a new study finds. In the study, the researchers scanned the brains of 71 Mexican-American 16-year-olds, and asked the teens whether they had ever used drugs, including cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana and other drugs. The researchers looked at whether the brain activity of certain regions was in sync (a measure known as "functional connectivity"), which suggests that the regions are talking to one another. Read the whole story: LiveScience
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Be Thankful, Save More: Study Says Gratitude Helps Us Reach Financial Goals
TODAY: A sizable body of research shows that people tend to discount the value of future rewards in favor of short-term gratification, but a new paper in the June issue of “Psychological Science” finds that thankfulness triggers patience and a willingness to hold out for greater monetary gain. In a series of experiments, subjects were offered an amount of money on the spot, or a greater amount if they waited until a predetermined future date. Researchers manipulated subjects’ frame of mind by asking them to spend five minutes writing about something that made them feel happy, grateful or neutral prior to being offered the money. Read the whole story: TODAY
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Why Teenagers Act Crazy
The New York Times: Adolescence is practically synonymous in our culture with risk taking, emotional drama and all forms of outlandish behavior. Until very recently, the widely accepted explanation for adolescent angst has been psychological. Developmentally, teenagers face a number of social and emotional challenges, like starting to separate from their parents, getting accepted into a peer group and figuring out who they really are. It doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to realize that these are anxiety-provoking transitions. But there is a darker side to adolescence that, until now, was poorly understood: a surge during teenage years in anxiety and fearfulness.
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How to Get Your Kids to Tell the Truth
New York Magazine: Only a social scientist would look at a classic, beloved children's story about the importance of honesty and ask, "I wonder if this is an empirically effective way to reduce lying in children?" But it's a good question, first because instilling honesty in kids is important for obvious reasons, and second because we actually don't know — we tell these stories out of tradition, not a rigorous sense of whether they're doing the work we expect of them. A research team led by Kang Lee of the University of Toronto set out to answer this question — with an interesting study.
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The Best Way to Predict the Future
BBC: Cast your mind back across the turbulent events of recent history. Did you foresee President Obama’s election before he was even elected as a Democratic candidate – or did you back Hillary Clinton? How about the Arab Spring – could you hear the revolution in the first tremors of dissatisfaction? And did you faithfully predict the recent Ukraine crisis? If you answer yes to these questions, you could be a “super-forecaster”, someone who is able to foresee the outcome of world events with astonishing accuracy. This has nothing to do with the reading of tea leaves; nor do you have to be a seasoned political pundit.
