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These Scientists Studied Why Internet Stories Go Viral. You Won’t Believe What They Found
Fast Company: A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal profiled Gawker editor Neetzan Zimmerman, whose job is to post content that's poised to go viral. Zimmerman does his job quite well. His posts generate about 30 million pageviews a month--tops at the site by far, six times what the second-leading staffer generates. Zimmerman's success is not the result of some computer formula; on the contrary, rather, "he understands the emotions that might compel a human being to click on something online," the Journal's Farhad Manjoo writes. If the traffic numbers don't already show the wisdom of Zimmerman's approach, the behavioral evidence certainly does.
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The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence
The Atlantic: Some of the greatest moments in human history were fueled by emotional intelligence. When Martin Luther King, Jr. presented his dream, he chose language that would stir the hearts of his audience. “Instead of honoring this sacred obligation” to liberty, King thundered, “American has given the Negro people a bad check.” He promised that a land “sweltering with the heat of oppression” could be “transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice,” and envisioned a future in which “on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” ...
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Why Apple May Struggle to Diversify Its Board
Under pressure from the public and from major shareholders, more and more companies are pushing to diversify leadership. Technology giant Apple emerged this week as the latest corporation promising to add more women and minorities to its board. “We live in an increasingly complex global marketplace, and the companies that can hire, attract, and retain women and people of color are better equipped to capitalize on global opportunities and avoid missteps that may not be apparent to a more homogenous group,” said Larisa Ruoff of the Sustainability Group -- which is one of Apple’s largest shareholders -- in a Bloomberg news article.
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The Most Focused Kids in the World?
In her new, provocatively titled book The Smartest Kids in the World, journalist Amanda Ripley tells the story of Kim, a 15-year-old Oklahoma girl who has the good fortune to spend a year going to school in Pietarsaari, on Finland’s west coast. Kim is fortunate because she has landed quite by chance in a public school system that Ripley identifies as one of the world’s best, a model of international academic performance year in and year out. Ripley reports on Kim’s experience, and on the lives of her Finnish classmates, as she tries to identify the reasons for Finnish kids’ superior academic performance.
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Parents sinking some kids with their puffed-up praise, study finds
NBC: Moms and dads who bathe kids in exaggerated flattery to boost low self-esteem are stifling the very children they hope to elevate, a new study shows. In experiments involving groups of about 1,000 adults and 500 children, scientists found that kids who self-identified as lacking confidence shied from tough tasks after receiving hyped compliments from adults, according to the paper, to appear in the journal Psychological Science. Researchers videotaped parents, tallying how often they juiced their verbal kudos if they believed their child struggled with esteem.
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In the Human Brain, Size Really Isn’t Everything
The New York Times: There are many things that make humans a unique species, but a couple stand out. One is our mind, the other our brain. The human mind can carry out cognitive tasks that other animals cannot, like using language, envisioning the distant future and inferring what other people are thinking. The human brain is exceptional, too. At three pounds, it is gigantic relative to our body size. Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, have brains that are only a third as big. Scientists have long suspected that our big brain and powerful mind are intimately connected. Starting about three million years ago, fossils of our ancient relatives record a huge increase in brain size.
