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Are You Vain Enough to Get Ahead?
The Wall Street Journal: You don’t have to be a total narcissist to be a successful executive – but a solid dash of ego can help. Self-aggrandizing individuals with a need for impact and power are slightly more likely to become leaders than the general population, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and personality testing firm Hogan Assessment Systems. But while a dose of self-confidence is necessary to raise your hand for the top job and steer a big corporation, too much can cause a leader and company to falter. ...
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Feeling mad? New devices can sense your mood and tell — or even text — others.
The Washington Post: Cognitive psychologist Mary Czerwinski and her boyfriend were having a vigorous argument as they drove to Vancouver, B.C., from Seattle, where she works at Microsoft Research. She can’t remember the subject, but she does recall that suddenly, his phone went off, and he read out the text message: “Your friend Mary isn’t feeling well. You might want to give her a call.” At the time, Czerwinski was wearing on her wrist a wireless device intended to monitor her emotional ups and downs. Similar to the technology used in lie detector tests, it interprets signals such as heart rate and electrical changes in the skin.
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Averting the Motherhood Penalty
Whether they’re willing to admit it or not, hiring managers tend to doubt working mothers’ dedication to the job. Previous studies have revealed that the so-called “motherhood penalty” is rather rampant in the job market. People generally assume that working mothers are less committed, and therefore less capable, on their jobs. One of the most telling studies on this mindset was published in 2007, when a team of researchers had a group of women, some of them wearing a prosthesis to make them appear pregnant, pose as either job applications or customers at retail stores. Store employees were generally more rude toward pregnant applicants vs.
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Know Thy Avatar: Good and Evil in the Gaming World
The 2013 Ben Stiller film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a remake of a 1947 Danny Kaye movie of the same name, which was itself based on a popular James Thurber story, first published in The New Yorker in 1939. The enduring appeal of this tale reflects the human urge to try on another identity, to be someone else for a time, to play act. Walter Mitty is an ordinary, boring fellow going about his very ordinary day, but in his rich heroic daydreams he is everything from assassin to fighter pilot to ER surgeon extraordinaire. It’s all good fun. But is it possible that such complete immersion in novel and extraordinary identities might have unintended consequences?
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Students Remember More With Personalized Review, Even After Classes End
A computer-based individualized study schedule boosted students’ recall on subsequent tests.
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Memory Wizards
CBS: You may -- or may not -- recall that a few years back, we brought you a story about a handful of people with memories that are almost unimaginable: name virtually any date in their lives, and they can tell you what they were doing that day, the day of the week, sometimes even the weather -- all within seconds. It’s a kind of memory that is brand new to science -- literally unheard of just a decade ago. After our story aired, the scientists studying this phenomenon were flooded with calls and emails. We were so intrigued, we decided to follow the research to see what further study might reveal about these remarkable memories and what it may mean for the rest of us.
