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Appearances Really Count When Rising to the Top
Even in the most egalitarian of working environments, certain people seem to reliably move to a higher status than others. They seem more competent and committed. In essence, they appear to be natural leaders. But groups don’t always place the most valuable or competent person in charge. Rather, the people who appear to be the most valuable or competent at any given time tend to achieve higher rank, a recent study indicates.
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Study Shows Couples’ Genes Could Affect Marital Bliss
NBC: A couple's chances for marital bliss may go beyond their ability to have and to hold. A new study released this week by scientists from Chicago's Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley shows DNA determines, in part, how happy you'll be in your marriage. “An enduring mystery is, what makes one spouse so attuned to the emotional climate in a marriage, and another so oblivious?” UC Berkeley psychologist Robert W. Levenson said. “With these new genetic findings, we now understand much more about what determines just how important emotions are for different people.” Read the whole story: NBC
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Too much eye contact could be why we’re not seeing eye to eye
Chicago Tribune: Like most Americans, I haven't looked up from my smartphone since 2007. I've evolved a nice set of sensitive, molelike whiskers that allow me to navigate around things like walls, other humans or automobiles. But there are still times when I'm forced into human interaction, and I've wondered — between Facebook posts — if not making eye contact is hampering my communication skills. After all, my dad always said it's best to look a person in the eyes when speaking. A new study I read on my phone while mole-whiskering along the edge of a building found that making eye contact can make you less persuasive.
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Most, Least Honest Cities: Where Are People Most Likely to Return a Lost Wallet?
ABC's Good Morning America: Don't drop your wallet in Lisbon: That's one finding from an experiment designed by Reader's Digest to test the honesty of people in 16 major cities worldwide. Of a dozen wallets dropped in Lisbon, only one was returned. Go ahead, though, and lose your wallet in Helsinki: There 11 of out 12 lost wallets were returned. In the experiment, Digest reporters deliberately dropped a total of 192 wallets in 16 cities in Europe, Asia and North and South America. Each one contained a cell phone number, a family photo, business cards and $50 U.S. (or the local equivalent).
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Science Asks: Who’s More Pig-Headed, Dems or Republicans?
TIME: Forget the ancient Greeks’ advice. In this political climate, it’s more like “nothing in moderation, everything in excess.” Frank Bruni’s column in Monday’s New York Times highlights some of the cable-TV hyperbole that seems to plague our political discussions these days by asking whether all the Nazi metaphors and lynching references have in fact pulled the right and the left further apart, making compromise impossible. “When nuance and perspective exit the language, do they exit the conversation as well?” he wrote. ”When you speak in ludicrous extremes, do you think that way, too? According to science, yes. ...
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New Research on Genetics and Intelligence
Read about the latest research on genetics and intelligence: Literacy and Numeracy Are More Heritable Than Intelligence in Primary School Yulia Kovas, Ivan Voronin, Andrey Kaydalov, Sergey B. Malykh, Philip S. Dale, and Robert Plomin Are literacy and numeracy less heritable than general cognitive ability? Monozygotic and dizygotic twins were assessed for literacy, numeracy, and general cognitive ability at ages 7, 9, and 12. Literacy and numeracy were found to be more heritable than general cognitive ability at ages 7 and 9 but not at age 12.
