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Neural Focus Groups
The Wall Street Journal: Can brain scans of small focus groups predict the opinions and reactions of the broader public? 31 test subjects who were interested in quitting smoking were recruited in Los Angeles to evaluate three anti-smoking ad campaigns. As they watched the ads, their neural activity was measured. Each campaign involved a mix of 30- and 15-second ads, for a total of 90 seconds of TV time; each ad ended by presenting the hotline 1-800-QUIT-NOW. The participants rated whether the ads were powerful, helpful, attention-grabbing and so on.
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Thinking your way to a better life
Chicago Tribune: "Life's slings and arrows" is Harvard-educated neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson's phrase for the events we spend our days ducking, sometimes unsuccessfully. Losing out on that promotion. Getting dumped. Navigating a cocktail party of boors (or bores). The stuff that conspires to keep us in a foul mood, despite our best intentions. And Davidson argues that our response to such events — and even to full-on tragedies, such as the death of a loved one — is as much a part of our identity as our fingerprints.
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Week in Ideas
The Wall Street Journal: Psychology Fast and Furious Could the hectic pace of modern life be spurring people to make risky choices? Researchers tested the effects of "thought speed" on appetite for risk. First, three dozen students read sentences aloud, at either twice their ordinary speed or half that speed, setting the pace for the brain. Then each participant played a computer simulation, getting five cents each time he or she pumped air into a balloon but losing the money if too much air went in and the balloon popped. People who had read quickly were more aggressive, attempting (and achieving) more pumps but also popping more balloons.
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How to Spot a Scoundrel: Fidgeting and Trust
The Huffington Post: Imagine the original job interview. The first one ever, back on the prehistoric savannahs of eastern Africa. It wouldn't have been exactly like a modern job interview, because early humans had no resumes or Linked-In or letters of recommendation to guide them. There was very little in the way of personal or professional reputation to go on, so in that sense the exchange was much trickier. But the fundamental idea was the same: Somehow the interviewer had to judge, in a brief spot of time, if the applicant -- a complete stranger -- was worthy of trust. Is this a person to do business with, to entrust with your money and your financial future?
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Study of the Day: Social Inequality May Foster Distrust, Cheating in School
The Atlantic: PROBLEM: It's unclear which factors influence how dishonest people. Does the tendency to cheat lie in people's genes or psychological makeup? Or are environmental factors more to blame? METHODOLOGY: To uncover the roots of academic dishonesty, Queen's University researcher Lukas Neville looked into state-level data from Google searches made between 2003 and 2011 for phrases like "free term paper," "buy term paper," and the names of cheating websites. He compared these to statistics on income inequality and how trusting people are in each state.
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Why Jane Austen would approve of online dating
USA Today: David Merkur is suddenly the poster boy for everything that's wrong with the crass world of online dating. Merkur, a New York investment banker, created a spreadsheet to keep track of the women he was dating, most of whom he had met on Match.com. Then he e-mailed it to one of his dates, who forwarded it on to her friends, and it went viral. Naturally, some of the 11 other women Merkur dated — and rated, and tabulated — are angry. When singles who have found matches by computer algorithm start using Excel to keep track of their relationships, perhaps it's time to take a critical look at online dating. Have we allowed the tools of the market to intrude where they don't belong?
