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Social Status Woes: Facial Structure Predicts Strategy for Getting to the Top
Whether you’re low on the totem pole at a new firm or a raking in a piddling salary in a dead-end job, the thought of climbing the social status ladder is intimidating. It often seems like clawing -- rather than climbing -- might be the most effective way to get the social status boost that comes with a promotion offer or salary hike. Oddly enough, for a particular subset of men with greater facial width-to-height ratios (FWHR) -- a physical sign of high testosterone levels -- aggressive behavior might actually be a go-to strategy for getting what they want.
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Optical Illusion Can Improve Your Golf Game
Inside Science: In studies at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., cognitive psychologist Jessica Witt found that simply making a hole appear larger on the green can improve a golfer's putting accuracy by as much as ten percent. “When the hole looked bigger participants were also more successful at putting. So, making the golf hole look bigger, even though it hadn’t changed size, it just looked bigger, led to more golf putting success,” said Witt, now at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Read the whole story: Inside Science
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Alcoholism Research Agency Names New Director
Science: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced yesterday that it has tapped neurobiologist George Koob of the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, to direct the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), starting January 2014. The move signals the end of a long period of limbo for the agency, which has operated under an acting director for several years while NIH deliberated on whether to merge the agency with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
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Social Connection Makes a Better Brain
The Atlantic: Matthew Lieberman, a distinguished social psychologist and neuroscientist, basically won the lottery. This past summer, he was offered three million dollars for an academic position—one million in raw income and two to do lab research. That’s a king’s ransom for a psychology professor. On average, psychology professors make less than six figures and rely on a patchwork of modest grants to sustain their research. All Lieberman had to do was spend four months this year and next year in Moscow, a nice enough city, doing some research—which he would have done anyway at home at UCLA. But there was a catch.
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Why Attractive Candidates Win
The New York Times: JOHN F. KENNEDY, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Kirsten Gillibrand: Americans have a long history of electing good-looking leaders. Of course, not every successful candidate could be a stand-in for George Clooney or Angelina Jolie. Indeed, sometimes a less attractive candidate triumphs over a better-looking rival. So when and why do voters prefer more attractive politicians? Scientists had previously theorized that the general preference for attractive leaders was just another example of a “halo effect.” In other words, we attribute all kinds of positive characteristics to attractive people, and this tendency leads to more votes for politicians who look like Hollywood stars.
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Touch May Alleviate Existential Fears for People With Low Self-Esteem
As human beings, we all know that we are going to die some day. Most of us deal with this knowledge by trying to live meaningful lives, but people with low self-esteem tend not to see their lives as particularly meaningful. Now, research suggests that touch may help people with low self-esteem in confronting their own mortality. “Even fleeting and seemingly trivial instances of interpersonal touch may help people to deal more effectively with existential concern,” explains psychological scientist and lead researcher Sander Koole of VU University Amsterdam.
