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We Are All Confident Idiots
Pacific Standard: Last March, during the enormous South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, the late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! sent a camera crew out into the streets to catch hipsters bluffing. “People who go to music festivals pride themselves on knowing who the next acts are,” Kimmel said to his studio audience, “even if they don’t actually know who the new acts are.” So the host had his crew ask festival-goers for their thoughts about bands that don’t exist. “The big buzz on the street,” said one of Kimmel’s interviewers to a man wearing thick-framed glasses and a whimsical T-shirt, “is Contact Dermatitis.
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Could Subliminal Messages Help Keep Seniors Healthy?
New York Magazine: Aging doesn’t occur in a vacuum. All sorts of factors ranging from genetic influence to support networks can alter what it means to get older and potentially face new, unfamiliar physical and emotional challenges. Andresearch has shown (PDF) that a big part of successfully adapting to these challenges is maintaining a positive attitude about the process.
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Your OkCupid Self
The New York Times: Who are you when you’re online dating? Are you your real self, stripped of the pretenses you put on when you’re out in the world? Do you take those pretenses with you when you log on? Or do you perhaps construct new ones, unique to the medium? And what does the self you bring to a dating site say not just about you, but about the site itself? The philosopher Evan Selinger gets at some of these questions in his recent Los Angeles Review of Books review of “Dataclysm,” an exploration by Christian Rudder, an OkCupid co-founder, of his site’s trove of numbers. The book’s subtitle is “Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking),” and Mr.
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Simple tweak could nearly double the amount you give to charity
Science Magazine: A representative from a charitable organization stops you on the sidewalk and asks for $100 to feed people starving in the developing world. And a large donor has agreed to match your donation. Still, you hesitate, because you wonder how much of that money will be sucked up by the salary of the charity's CEO or the costs of yet more fundraising.
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The Most Undervalued Employee in Your Business
Inc.: Employees who tell it like it is without any concern for your feelings might get on your nerves a bit--but they are the most undervalued people in business. That's according to Adam Grant, author of the book Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success. Grant calls these kinds of people "disagreeable givers." "Disagreeable givers are the people who, on the surface, are rough and tough, but ultimately have others' best interests at heart," Grant said.
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That Devil on Your Shoulder Likes to Sleep In
The New York Times: It is often asked why good people do bad things. Perhaps the question should be when. More likely, it’s in the afternoon or evening. Much less so in the morning. That’s the finding of research, published in the journal Psychological Science, which concludes that a person’s ability to self-regulate declines as the day wears on, increasing the likelihood of cheating, lying or committing fraud. This so-called morning morality effect results from “cognitive tiredness,” said Isaac H.
