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What Surveys Don’t Know About You
The Wall Street Journal: Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture riffs today on how meaningless he finds the National Retail Federation surveys of how much consumers expect to spend at holiday time. His table of year-over-year changes in expected vs. actual spending is an eye-opener. The same phenomenon has been documented by social scientists for decades: People are almost freakishly inept at forecasting their future behavior. That’s largely because you predict your future behavior by assessing how you feel now about a decision you won’t be making for some time to come. Your assessment of how you think you will feel in the future depends very largely on how you feel in the present.
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Wie Gesichter in der Erinnerung bleiben
Der Spiegel: Auge, Nase, Mund - wer Gesichter nur als Summe ihrer Bestandteile wahrnimmt, erkennt sie später schlechter wieder. Wer das Antlitz seines Gegenübers allerdings im Ganzen wahrnimmt, wird sich später eher an die Person erinnern. Das berichten Forscher von der chinesischen Beijing Normal University in dem Fachjournal "Psychological Science". "Im täglichen Leben nehmen wir unsere Welt sowohl holistisch, also im großen Ganzen wahr, aber auch analytisch, also in ihren Details", sagt der Autor der Studie, Liu Jia. Während das Gehirn generell alle möglichen Objekte wie Autos, Tiere und Häuser analysiere, sei für Gesichter eine ganzheitliche Verarbeitung bedeutsam.
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Breast-Feeding Is Important to Mother-Baby Bonding
TIME: Breast milk may be the key to mother-baby bonding, according to research that found that breast-feeding mothers demonstrate stronger brain responses when they hear their baby cry. They're also more likely than formula-feeding moms to bond with their babies, says a study published in the May issue of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Researchers at the Child Study Center at Yale University performed functional MRIs (fMRIs) on nine breast-feeding moms and eight formula feeders about a month after their babies were born. Participants listened to clips of their own baby and an unknown child crying, as researchers analyzed which areas of their brains lit up.
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Awakening Your Inner Materialist
I don’t see myself as especially materialistic, and you probably don’t see yourself that way either. The fact is, I don’t know anyone who actually takes pride in acquiring more and more stuff, and many of my friends decry the commercialization of the holiday season. That’s a good thing, because all the evidence says that people who are preoccupied with possessions are not very happy people. Consumerism is linked to anxiety, lousy relationships, and poor mental and physical health. But let’s not get too self-righteous quite yet. We may not derive our core sense of self-worth from what we buy and own, but does that mean we’re immune to all the cues in our consumer culture?
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Employee misconduct unsettles companies
The Times of India: People often judge a 'group' mind differently from that of a 'member' which has led to the cropping up of issues like decision-making, blame and moral judgment in companies, political groups and organizations, according to a new study. The more people judge a group to have a mind, which includes the ability to think, intend or plan, the less they judge a member of that group to have his or her own aptitude to think, intent or plan, and vice versa. This is the so-called 'trade off' in the way people view the group versus the way they view individuals in the group. Read the whole story: The Times of India
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For Creative People, Cheating Comes More Easily
NPR: Five months after the implosion of Enron, Feb. 12, 2002, the company's chief executive, Ken Lay, finally stood in front of Congress and the world, and placed his hand on a Bible. At that point everyone had questions for Lay. It was clear by then that Enron was the product of a spectacular ethical failure, that there had been massive cheating and lying. The real question was: How many people had been dishonest? Who was in on it? Everyone wanted to know, and Lay, after his swearing in, said he badly wanted to explain things. There was just one problem: His lawyer insisted that he plead the Fifth. And so the public got no answers that day.
