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Seeing Red on the Road: Can Car Color Impact Driver Behavior?
It’s a common belief that driving a red car leads to more speeding tickets and higher car insurance rates. However, research from a 2007 study by Monash University in Australia found that red cars are actually slightly less likely to be involved in accidents compared to other colors (black cars were actually most accident prone). The insurance industry also denies that car color comes into play when setting car insurance rates, though they do look at the vehicle make and model. New research from an international team of psychological scientists puts the brakes on another common stereotype about red cars: they elicit more aggressive driving.
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Weight Bias Impacts Our Perceptions of Competence
Overweight individuals often face discrimination across many stages of their careers. Compared to their thinner colleagues, people who are overweight are less likely to be hired, less likely to be promoted, and ultimately earn lower wages. A new study suggests this weight-based bias may even extend to judgments of competence. Psychological scientists Emma Levine and Maurice Schweitzer of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania found that people gave overweight individuals low ratings for competence, regardless of their qualifications or performance.
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Too much “alone time” may shorten your life
CBS News: More Americans than ever before are living alone. Some people are better at this than others; they thrive on "alone time," and seem perfectly happy flying solo at the movies, restaurants and on vacation when the rest of the world couldn't imagine doing these things without a partner, spouse or friends. But new research finds that even if you relish solitary living, too much "me time"could cut your life short. A study conducted by researchers at Brigham Young University finds both loneliness and social isolation could shorten a person's life span, comparable to the effects of obesity.
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Older Really Can Mean Wiser
The New York Times: Behind all those canned compliments for older adults — spry! wily! wise! — is an appreciation for something that scientists have had a hard time characterizing: mental faculties that improve with age. Knowledge is a large part of the equation, of course. People who are middle-aged and older tend to know more than young adults, by virtue of having been around longer, and score higher on vocabulary tests, crossword puzzles and other measures of so-called crystallized intelligence. Still, young adults who consult their elders (mostly when desperate) don’t do so just to gather facts, solve crosswords or borrow a credit card.
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How accepting your ‘bad’ moods can actually make you happier
The Washington Post: We all say we want to be happy. But that isn’t the right goal, argues Todd Kashdan, professor of psychology and a senior scientist at the at the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being at George Mason University. Kashdan is co-author with Robert Biswas-Diener of The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why being your whole self – not just your “good” self – drives success and fulfillment. He explains: Q: Just what IS the upside of our dark side? Kashdan: One of the most important things that we’ve discovered – the message that we should always feel good and try not to feel bad, ends up being a toxic message that doesn’t work well as a strategy for going through life.
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Sheryl Sandberg teams up with LeBron James to get men to #LeanIn
CNN: In the two years since "Lean In" became a best-seller and sparked countless conversations about gender equality, author Sheryl Sandberg says she has gotten one question over and over from men: What can they do? Now the Facebook chief operating officer is giving them some specific answers by aligning with one of the most popular athletes on the planet. If LeBron James is encouraging men to lean in for women, don't you think some of his 19 million Twitter followers will get the message too?
