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The Face of Fortune: When CEO Appearance Predicts Company Success
Can we predict how successful a company will be just by looking at the CEO’s face? Several studies have shown that people are surprisingly good at judging a leader’s success based just based on a photo. For example, researchers have found that CEOs with masculine facial features that connote dominance and aggression tended to lead companies with greater annual net profits. But a new study suggests that this relationship between CEO appearance and company profitability may depend on the broader economic climate. Psychological scientists Nicholas O. Rule and Konstantin O.
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The Fake-Tongue Illusion
The New Yorker: The tongue in the title of Oxford University’s Crossmodal Research Laboratory’s new paper, “The Butcher’s Tongue Illusion,” does not come from a butcher shop. “I actually just ordered the most normal-looking rubber tongue from a magic store,” Charles Michel, the report’s lead author and a professionally trained chef, said. “Magicians put them in their mouths and tie them in knots and things like that.” Michel and his co-authors put their magic tongue to use in a simple but provocative experiment, carried out late last year and described in the current issue of the scientific journal Perception.
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The Lisa Feldman Barrett lab
Science: Each year, Lisa Feldman Barrett sends a fresh crop of newly minted Ph.D.s and postdocs out into the scientific job market. She is a professor of social psychology and neuroscience at Northeastern University in Boston, and like many scientists with large, active research labs, she watches with dismay as some Ph.D.s and postdocs struggle to find a secure job, as she did 2 decades ago. “In some ways the job market has gotten better,” she says, at least for women. The bias against female scientists is far from gone, “but the situation has definitely improved.” At the very least, overt exclusion of women in science is frowned upon.
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“I Will Listen”: How Social Media Can Diminish the Stigma of Mental Illness
Scientific American: One in four people will suffer from mental illness at some point in their lifetimes, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Yet often these individuals conceal their difficulties from friends, co-workers, family health professionals and others who could offer help. When the New York City chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI–NYC) decided to investigate this phenomenon, they found that fear of being stigmatized—resulting in part from beliefs that individuals with mental illness are unpredictable or dangerous—was keeping many people silent.
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Psychologist takes a stand on why posture matters
The Columbus Dispatch: Appearances at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conferences have made stars of unlikely people, but perhaps no one more so than Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist and associate professor at Harvard Business School. Her rousing presentation in 2012 at the TED Global idea conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, on “ power poses” is among the most viewed TED talks of all time. Cuddy, 42, has attracted speaking invitations from throughout the world, a contract for a book to be published next year and an eclectic army of posture-conscious followers.
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Steven Pinker: By the Book
The New York Times: The author of “The Language Instinct,” “The Blank Slate” and, most recently, “The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century” has never gotten in trouble for reading a book. “Just for writing them.” What books are currently on your night stand? “How Could This Happen: Explaining the Holocaust,” by Dan McMillan. “Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found,” by Frances Larson. “Ascent of the A-Word: A_ism, the First Sixty Years,” by Geoffrey Nunberg. “The Enlightenment,” by Anthony Pagden. “Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow,” by F. R. Leavis. What was the last truly great book you read?
