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Fear Of Cantaloupes And Crumpets? A ‘Phobia’ Rises From The Web
NPR: Four years ago, my husband revealed one of his more peculiar qualities: He's freaked out by the sight of sliced cantaloupe. The melon seeds, all clustered together, make his skin itch and his stomach churn. Then he gets obsessed and can't stop talking about it. Research psychologist Arnold Wilkins at the U.K.'s University of Essex has been investigating the phenomenon, and he thinks he might know what's going on. In images that set off this repulsion, the pattern of contrast is similar to that found in photographs of extremely poisonous animals — like box jellyfish, king cobras and Brazilian wandering spiders.
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Think extroverts make the best salespeople? Think again
The Globe and Mail: Outgoing, gregarious, good shmoozers: The people we think of as extroverts are the best people to put into sales roles, right? Wrong, according to this fascinating piece in The Washington Post. The piece, by author Daniel Pink, points to research that has found that extroversion is one of the big traits that hiring managers look for when bringing on sales staff. The only problem, it notes, is that there is no research to support the notion that extroverts do best on the sales floor. In fact, any efforts to make the connection have come up with a “flimsy” correlation, at best, the Post piece says.
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Feeling Anxious? Think Again.
The Huffington Post: Americans' number one fear is public speaking, hands down. Pollsters have reported time and again that the average person dreads public speaking more than disease or even death. These polls merely confirm what our sweaty palms and elevated heart beat make undeniable: Standing up and addressing an audience brings out our worst insecurities about performance and failure and the judgment of others. ... A team of psychological scientists has been exploring the interplay of thinking, attention and physiology in SAD.
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What You Might Be Missing
The Wall Street Journal: People lie. We tell Aunt Linda we like her new hat. We tell a creditor that the check is in the mail. And we don't just lie to others, we lie to ourselves: Those extra pounds look good on me. I can quit smoking anytime I want—I just don't want to. Because we are liars, simply asking people what their innermost thoughts are can produce inaccurate results. This is particularly true for sensitive topics such as racism and bigotry. Psychologists and pollsters have long known that people will offer self-serving answers to questions about such topics and will act in ways that reveal latent biases. ...
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A Match Made in the Code
The New York Times: New Orleans — In the quest to find true love, is filling out a questionnaire on a Web site any more scientific than praying to St. Valentine? Yes, according to psychologists at eHarmony, an online company that claims its computerized algorithms will help match you with a “soul mate.” But this claim was criticized in a psychology journal last year by a team of academic researchers, who concluded that “no compelling evidence supports matching sites’ claims that mathematical algorithms work.” In response, eHarmony’s senior research scientist, Gian C. Gonzaga, went into the academic lions’ den known as S.P.S.P.
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What a Mess: Chaos and Creativity
One of the most influential ideas about crime prevention to come out in recent years is something called the “broken windows theory.” According to this theory, small acts of deviance—littering, graffiti, broken windows—will, if ignored, escalate into more serious crime. In practice, this theory leads to zero tolerance of public disorder and petty crime. Both theory and practice have been embraced by some big city mayors, most notably Rudy Giuliani, who credited the strategy with significantly cutting serious crime in 1990s New York City. The idea has been controversial from the start, for many reasons, but it does get some empirical support from psychological science.
