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Why Does Time Fly as We Get Older?
Scientific American: Another year; another Christmas around the corner. The conversation around the watercooler these days has evolved into the annual “where has the time gone?” discussion—how quickly the neighborhood kids have become high school graduates; how our hot July beach vacations seem like they were just yesterday; and how we haven’t baked cookies or sent cards or bought gifts yet because time has just been flying by. It’s become a common complaint—almost a joke—that time seems to whiz by faster and faster as we get older. Of course, aging doesn’t grant us the power to disrupt the space-time continuum, so it’s not a real problem. But why do we perceive it to be? ...
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A cure for Wall Street corruption? Science says thinking about time strengthens morality
National Monitor: Wall Street bankers, or really anyone whose job involves working in finance, has gotten a bad rap since the 2008 financial meltdown. It’s no surprise, because priming people to think about money makes them more likely to cheat and act dishonestly. Well, science may have found a “cure,” of sorts: According to new research published in Psychological Science, prompting people to think about time (which, depending on whom you ask, is either the exact same or total opposite of money) appears to strengthen their moral compass.
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The Ticking Clock
You’re sitting at your computer in the middle of a busy work day, merrily tapping away at your keyboard, when all of a sudden you look up at your clock, and panic strikes. That meeting you should have been in started 10 minutes ago! As you rush to join your colleagues you may wonder, What does my tardiness say about me as an employee? Will my colleagues think less of me? I hope I’m not the only one who’s late. So what does meeting lateness actually say about us as employees? Unfortunately, little research has specifically examined the definition, correlates, and implications of meeting lateness.
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Why Your Name Matters
The New Yorker: In 1948, two professors at Harvard University published a study of thirty-three hundred men who had recently graduated, looking at whether their names had any bearing on their academic performance. The men with unusual names, the study found, were more likely to have flunked out or to have exhibited symptoms of psychological neurosis than those with more common names. The Mikes were doing just fine, but the Berriens were having trouble. A rare name, the professors surmised, had a negative psychological effect on its bearer. ... That view, however, may not withstand closer scrutiny.
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‘Affluenza’: Is it real?
CNN: Attorneys for Texas teen Ethan Couch claimed that his "affluenza" meant he was blameless for driving drunk and causing a crash that left four people dead in June. Judge Jean Boyd sentenced him Tuesday to 10 years of probation but no jail time, saying she would work to find him a long-term treatment facility. ... But the term highlights the issue of parents, particularly upper-middle-class ones, who not only refuse to discipline their children but may protest the efforts of others -- school officials, law enforcement and the courts -- who attempt to do so, said Suniya Luthar, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University.
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Women Will Tolerate Sexually Explicit Ads — at the Right Price
Harvard Business Review: Kathleen D. Vohs, the Land O’Lakes Professor of Excellence in Marketing at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, and her colleagues set up a study in which men and women viewed advertisements for wristwatches. One of the watches was priced low, at $10; the other ran for $1250. The subjects viewed each watch against both a simple mountain backdrop and a sexually explicit scene. So do women ever think sex sells? Professor Vohs, defend your research. When men and women view sex-based ads featuring a cheap watch versus an expensive one, their reactions differ. Men’s reactions don’t vary much, regardless of how much the watch costs.
