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Studying Office Social Networks to Improve Teamwork
The perception that an organization’s rules and policies are fair may be particularly important for people who work closely together in teams. When people perceive that they are being treated fairly by their organization, having a sense of what’s called “procedural justice,” they perform better as a team and show more positive behavior as individuals. But when the boss plays favorites, trust between teammates can plummet. In a recent study, psychological scientists Dong Liu (Georgia Institute of Technology), Morela Hernandez (University of Washington), and Lei Wang (Xi’an Jiaotong University) utilized a novel social network approach to studying teams.
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The Science of Interrogation: Rapport, Not Torture
Chris Matthews, who hosts the MSNBC news program Hardball, is convinced that torture works. In the last two days, in the wake of the Senate Intelligence Committee's damning report on CIA interrogation practices, he has allowed that so-called "enhanced interrogation" may be illegal and immoral, but he keeps reiterating versions of his belief that, for all that, it's effective in eliciting information from the enemy. That is, like it or not, it works. Except that it doesn't. Matthews is wrong about this. It's perhaps unfair to single Matthews out, since he is not alone in this unshakable belief that if you hurt somebody enough, they will tell you the truth.
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Study on Cultural Memory Confirms: Chester A. Arthur, We Hardly Knew Ye
The New York Times: Quick: Which American president served before slavery ended, John Tyler or Rutherford B. Hayes? If you need Google to get the answer, you are not alone. (It is Tyler.) Collective cultural memory — for presidents, for example — works according to the same laws as the individual kind, at least when it comes to recalling historical names and remembering them in a given order, researchers reported on Thursday. The findings suggest that leaders who are well known today, like the elder President George Bush and President Bill Clinton, will be all but lost to public memory in just a few decades.
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Why Everything You Think About Aging May Be Wrong
The Wall Street Journal: Everyone knows that as we age, our minds and bodies decline—and life inevitably becomes less satisfying and enjoyable. Everyone knows that cognitive decline is inevitable. Everyone knows that as we get older, we become less productive at work. Everyone, it seems, is wrong.
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Shop Yourself Happy
The Atlantic: This year, a few pure souls might celebrate a freegan Christmas. Some will opt for a "Buy-Nothing" holiday. Others still will pull off a DIY Hanukkah. The vast majority of people who have some disposable income, however, will do what all the glossy store catalogs implore this time of year and "SHOP NOW." Even among those who think that Black Friday insanity, and holiday consumerism in general, are terrible, the default setting during December is to buy things. Behavioral economists have been puzzling for years over how much and what kinds of spending provides the biggest happiness boost for the buyer.
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Study Shows Riding The Quiet Car Is Crushing Your Spirit
NPR: An experiment in Chicago randomly assigned train and bus riders to either talk to the stranger next to them or commute quietly. The result? Even for introverts, silence leaves you sadder. STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Many of us have some way to occupy ourselves on our commute. We may sip a cup of coffee in the drink holder. We may listen to the radio. If you ride the train to work, you have other options. You can sit in solitude reading, looking at your phone or you can talk to the person next to you. So which would make you happier? NPR's Shankar Vedantam joins us each week on this program. He's here with an answer. Hi, Shankar. Read the whole story: NPR
