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Denn wir wissen nicht, was wir sagen (For we know not what we say)
Süddeutsche Zeitung: Wenn wir einen Satz sagen wollen, geht diesem im Idealfall ein Gedankenprozess voraus. Diese Gedanken wandelt unser Gehirn in Sprache um und anschließend kommen mehr oder weniger kluge Sätze aus unseren Mündern. Es gibt aber auch Forscher, die behaupten, dass Sprache nicht immer "geplant" wird - und dass Menschen zum Teil erst wissen, was sie reden, wenn sie sich sprechen hören. Folgt man diesem Ansatz, dann könnte man sie recht einfach davon überzeugen, etwas völlig anderes gesagt zu haben, als sie tatsächlich von sich gegeben haben.
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Will the Great Recession Spawn Humble CEOs?
For years, social scientists have been interested in narcissism among America’s corporate titans. Narcissistic CEOs are known for their self-promotion, excessive self-regard, and tendency to draw attention to themselves. They also tend to embrace risk and lead companies that either perform fantastically well or catastrophically poorly. One signal of a narcissistic CEO is relative pay. Narcissistic CEOs pay themselves considerably more than other members of their top management team. CEOs have some control over their own pay and almost complete control over the pay of other executives.
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Mothers’ Symptoms of Depression Predict How They Respond to Child Behavior
Depressive symptoms seem to focus mothers' responses on minimizing their own distress, which may come at the expense of focusing on the impact their responses have on their children, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Depressive symptoms are common among mothers, and these symptoms are linked with worse developmental outcomes for children. The new study, which followed 319 mothers and their children over a two-year period, helps to explain why parenting competence seems to deteriorate as parents' symptoms of depression increase.
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Multitask Masters
The New Yorker: In 2012, David Strayer found himself in a research lab, on the outskirts of London, observing something he hadn’t thought possible: extraordinary multitasking. For his entire career, Strayer, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah, had been studying attention—how it works and how it doesn’t. Methods had come and gone, theories had replaced theories, but one constant remained: humans couldn’t multitask. Each time someone tried to focus on more than one thing at a time, performance suffered. Most recently, Strayer had been focussing on people who drive while on the phone.
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Bonnes notes (Good Notes)
LeMonde: Je sortais d'une conférence cahier et stylo à la main, quand une nouvelle réconfortante s'est affichée sur l'écran de mon téléphone « intelligent ». Selon Pam Mueller et Daniel Oppenheimer, respectivement chercheurs en psychologie à l'université de Princeton (New Jersey) et à l'université de Californie, le papier et le crayon ne sont pas du tout ringards. Ils s'avèrent même mieux adaptés pour prendre des notes et les mémoriser. Inutile donc de culpabiliser face aux collègues, à la frappe véloce, qui saisissent plus de données en pianotant sur les claviers de leurs tablettes ou ordinateurs ultralégers. Read the whole story: LeMonde
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Daydreaming—You Are Doing It Wrong. How To Make Your Fantasies More Productive
Fast Company: Daydreaming often gets a bad rap. In a world focused on being as efficient and productive as possible, distracted mind wandering seems like a blatant waste of time. Fantasies alone can actually be de-motivating. If you dream of an ideal future, you experience some of the pleasure of having that future just because you’re dreaming about it. It is hard to be too motivated to work to change yourself when you are already feeling good about your life. But fantasies about the future (say, your dream job) can be motivating if you use them in the right way. Gabriele Oettingen and her colleagues at NYU have been studying the role of fantasies in goal achievement for decades.
