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Shakespeare’s Plays Reveal His Psychological Signature
Shakespeare is such a towering literary figure that any new insight into the man, or his work, tends to generate a jolt of excitement in academic and non-academic communities of Shakespeare aficionados. Applying psychological theory and text-analyzing software, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have discovered a unique psychological profile that characterizes Shakespeare’s established works, and this profile strongly identifies Shakespeare as an author of the long-contested play Double Falsehood. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Study: Your Voice Is The Secret To Getting Hired
Forbes: If you want the job, you better speak up: Your voice carries a personal power that assures people of your intelligence and competence in a way that mere written words can’t. A new study by University of Chicago Booth School of Business researchers, to be published by the Journal of Psychological Science, found that job candidates were more likely to be hired if they make their pitch using their voice rather than text. ... The Booth School researchers, Professor Nicholas Epley and Ph.D. candidate Juliana Schroeder, asked recruiters and hypothetical employers to rate candidates on their qualifications.
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Negative Emotional Cues Send Drivers to Distraction
Driver distraction is one of the leading causes of motor vehicle accidents. In 2013 alone, 3,154 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes involving distracted drivers, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Obvious distractions, like talking on a cell phone, can contribute to accidents by physically diverting a driver’s attention away from the road. But scientists are finding that more subtle emotional cues in our environment can also have a potentially dangerous influence on attention and, ultimately, our driving behavior.
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Tweeners Trust Peers More Than Adults When Judging Risks
NPR: If you are the parent of a preteen, you are all too aware that they suddenly seem to value the opinions of their peers far more than yours. The good news, if there is any, is that you're not alone. Young teenagers ages 12 to 14 are more influenced by their peers' opinions than they are by adults', a study finds. That's true only for that age group, not for older teens, children or adults. Researchers asked 563 people visiting the London Science Museum to rate the riskiness of activities like crossing the street on a red light, biking without a helmet, or bungee jumping. The study was published last week in Psychological Science. Read the whole story: NPR
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What You Order for Dinner Tells a Restaurant More Than You Might Expect
The Wall Street Journal: Men order steak, women order salad, right? The restaurant world has never been that simple, of course, and especially not now, when diners expect an experience and not just a meal when they go out to eat. Yet many chefs say it is remarkable how many diners continue to order largely along gender-based lines. Restaurants and menu consultants say it pays to balance gender preferences, both when designing individual dishes and when planning the overall menu. The Regency Bar and Grill, inside the Loews Regency Hotel on New York’s Park Avenue, had some of these principles in mind when it recently expanded its meat-heavy menu.
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At What Age Does Your Brain Peak?
Pacific Standard: Sports writers will tell you that athletes peak in their 20s, after which point their skills quickly erode. Most other things in our lives—our careers, for example—take a good deal more time to develop. Intelligence, it turns out, peaks a bit later, too, though with a twist, according to a recent study: Some facets of intelligence peak when we're still in high school or college, while others continue to improve into our 40s, 50s, and beyond.
