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Using a Foreign Language Helps Decision-Making
If you think that decisions are based only on the evidence presented, think again. In fact, think about the question in a different language, assessing the risks inherent in making decisions. Your reactions may be surprising. In a study that appears in the current issue of Psychological Science, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers at the University of Chicago have found that people make more analytic decisions when they think through a problem in their non-native tongue. These findings have implications in many arenas but especially for people doing business in a global economy.
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Gecijferdheid
de Volkskrant: 'In de ACME Sponsorloterij is de kans op het winnen van een auto 1 op 1.000. Hoeveel procent van de lootjes in de ACME Sponsorloterij wint een auto?' Zelfs van redelijk geschoolde mensen geeft niet veel meer dan een kwart het juiste antwoord op deze vraag. Geen wonder dat het uitleggen van kansen en risico's tot de lastigste taken van journalisten en voorlichters, huisartsen en praktijkondersteuners hoort. Als ze er zelf al wijs uit kunnen - journalisten en voorlichters, huisartsen en praktijkondersteuners horen immers ook tot de redelijk geschoolde mensen. 'Stel we rollen een eerlijke, zeskantige dobbelsteen duizend keer.
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Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?
The Atlantic: Despite its immense popularity, or more likely because of it, Facebook has, from the beginning, been under something of a cloud of suspicion. The depiction of Mark Zuckerberg, in The Social Network, as a bastard with symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome, was nonsense. But it felt true. It felt true to Facebook, if not to Zuckerberg. The film’s most indelible scene, the one that may well have earned it an Oscar, was the final, silent shot of an anomic Zuckerberg sending out a friend request to his ex-girlfriend, then waiting and clicking and waiting and clicking—a moment of superconnected loneliness preserved in amber.
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Does Being Black Make Leadership Easier For Women?
Forbes: Black women in leadership roles are judged less harshly for behaving assertively than are white women or black men, says a new study by three academics. The researchers asked 84 online participants (none black; 64% women) to evaluate a written description of a fictional supervisor who gave a negative performance review to an employee.
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Crew Schedules, Sleep Deprivation, and Aviation Performance
Night-time departures, early morning arrivals, and adjusting to several time zones in a matter of days can rattle circadian rhythms, compromise attention and challenge vigilance. And yet, these are the very conditions many pilots face
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Do anti-tobacco ads work? Ask a ‘neural focus group’
While watching TV this weekend, I happened on a gruesomely powerful anti-smoking advertisement. It featured former smokers who were missing body parts—a woman with missing fingers and a handsome young man with two prosthetic devices where his lower legs used to be. Both talked matter-of-factly about their permanent disabilities, which were direct consequences of their long-time cigarette habits. This ad is part of a new, $54 million campaign by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the most ambitious and starkest anti-tobacco campaign ever undertaken by the government. Other ads in the campaign show ex-smokers who have had their larynx removed, or a jaw or a lung.
