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Why Office Jerks Get Ahead
People who score high on some sinister personality traits appear to have better career prospects, according to a scientific review.
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Risky Business: Teens Brains Behind the Wheel
Teen drivers are notorious for their bad decisions behind the wheel. According to the US Centers for Disease Control, the risk of car crashes is higher among 16-19-year-olds than among any other age group. In fact, per mile driven, teen drivers are nearly three times more likely than drivers aged 20 and older to be in a fatal crash. You might think that a more developmentally mature brain would guarantee more sensible decision-making in teen drivers, but a new study suggests just the opposite.
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The Arithmetic of Compassion
The New York Times: WE all can relate to the saying “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” Our sympathy for suffering and loss declines precipitously when we are presented with increasing numbers of victims. In the 1950s, the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton studied survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and discovered that a condition he labeled “psychic numbing” enabled them to withstand the psychological trauma of this experience. Psychologists have since extended Dr.
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Freedom from want
The Boston Globe: AMONG NON-OBESE college students who were allowed to eat as many cookies as they wanted, students who had grown up poor as children ate the same amount regardless of how hungry they were — or what their glucose levels were — even controlling for body weight and how much they liked the cookies. In contrast, consumption by students who had an affluent childhood was strongly tied to hunger. Read the whole story: The Boston Globe
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Money triggers social insensitivity … and hard work
Marketplace: The third topic of our series: Money priming. That is, how subtle exposure to the concept of money can influence our behaviors. When we're exposed to money — even fake money or reminders of money — our behavior changes. Many studies show that people become less socially sensitive when exposed to reminders of the idea of money. They also work longer and harder on difficult tasks. Kathleen Vohs teaches marketing at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. She studies the psychology of money and tells us about some of her favorite experiments. Read the whole story: Marketplace
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Maximizing the Gains and Minimizing the Pains of Diversity
For organizations, diversity pays off. Empirical research has shown that diversity increases creativity and innovation and promotes better decision making because it spurs deeper information processing and complex thinking.
