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Personal Judgments Are Swayed by Group Opinion, but Only for 3 Days
We all want to feel like we’re free-thinking individuals, but there’s nothing like the power of social pressure to sway an opinion. New research suggests that people do change their own personal judgments so that they fall in line with the group norm, but the change only seems to last about 3 days. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “Our findings suggest that exposure to others' opinions does indeed change our own private opinions -- but it doesn’t change them forever,” says psychological scientist and study author Rongjun Yu of South China Normal University.
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The Buffer Zone: Romance and Insecurity
Let’s call them Linda and Max. They’ve been a committed couple for some years now, but Max brings a lot of emotional baggage to the relationship. Previous girlfriends treated him shabbily, and as a result he’s insecure about Linda, not entirely convinced she loves him. On occasion this persistent fretting makes him act like a . . . well, a jerk. You know Linda and Max. I know I do—or at least versions of them. Most people would say they’re doomed as a couple, yet they last. Somehow, when Max is threatened, Linda knows to give him the reassurances he needs. She intuitively helps him control his emotions and feel safer, and as a result he behaves better.
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A Slow-Tech Approach to Tracking Spending
The New York Times: Last week, Psychological Science published a study about how well students recall a lecture if they type the notes or write them longhand. While the students who typed could take more notes, they didn’t perform as well on conceptual questions. The researchers showed that the typists took notes verbatim, while the writers processed what they heard and then wrote the ideas in their own words. The writers could better remember the message because they’d actually processed what it meant. I think something similar happens when we try to automate our budgeting process. Pulling in all our purchases automatically sounds an awful lot like typing notes verbatim.
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Millennials might not be as narcissistic as everyone thought
The Washington Post: If you ever read anything about millennials online, you’ve probably seen something calling this generation narcissistic. A surge in self-importance, some say! “Deluded narcissists,” others opine! Whatever this “Me Me Me Generation” article was! Well, it turns out that because many millennials began their professional lives during an economic nightmare, they are actually less likely to be self-interested when they get older. That’s according to new research published in the journal Psychological Science.
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To Remember a Lecture Better, Take Notes by Hand
The Atlantic: Psych 101 was about to start, and Pam Mueller had forgotten her laptop at home. This meant more than lost Facebook time. A psychology grad student at Princeton, Mueller was one of the class teaching assistants. It was important she have good notes on the lecture. Normally she used her laptop to take notes, but, without it, she’d have to rely on a more traditional approach. So she put pen to paper—and found something surprising. Class just seemed better. “I felt like I had gotten so much more out of the lecture that day,” she said. So she shared the story with Daniel Oppenheimer, the professor teaching the class.
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No Extra Credit for Delivering on Promises
If you promise to complete a project on time and you deliver it ahead of the deadline, don’t expect any special kudos from your boss. If you pledge a certain level of service and deliver even more than you promise, you aren’t likely to receive any especially-rosy customer reviews. That’s the conclusion drawn from a recent management study about the social consequences of surpassing promises. There is plenty of research showing that keeping promises builds trust and loyalty from customers, employees, and friends.
