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Yours or Mine? How We Handle Objects Depends on Who Owns Them
From scissors and staplers to car keys and cell phones, we pass objects to other people every day. We often try to pass the objects so that the handle or other useful feature is facing the appropriate direction for the person receiving the item, but new research shows that we’re less accommodating when it comes to handing over our own belongings. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “The associations or attachments that we have with an object leak into our movements in unintended ways when we interact with them,” says psychology researcher and study author Merryn Constable of the University of Toronto.
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The Difference Between Rationality and Intelligence
The New York Times: ARE you intelligent — or rational? The question may sound redundant, but in recent years researchers have demonstrated just how distinct those two cognitive attributes actually are. It all started in the early 1970s, when the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky conducted an influential series of experiments showing that all of us, even highly intelligent people, are prone to irrationality. Across a wide range of scenarios, the experiments revealed, people tend to make decisions based on intuition rather than reason.
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Are Some Kids More Likely to Become Narcissists?
Scientific American Mind: Some individuals are indeed more susceptible to developing a narcissistic personality. Narcissism is characterized by self-centeredness (“It's all about me!”), grandiosity (“I'm better than you!”) and vanity (“Look at me!”). It involves multifaceted psychological traits, motives and needs that influence how a person thinks, feels and behaves. Given this complexity, developing this form of extreme self-love is not as simple as inheriting a particular gene or experiencing a specific event. Instead becoming a narcissist likely involves an intricate mix of genetic and psychological or environmental factors. Read the whole story: Scientific American Mind
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A psychologist says a small tweak to the questions you ask your boss can make them think better of you
Business Insider: You can drive yourself crazy trying to figure out how to get your boss to like you. Maybe you'll stay at the office all night so you can submit a project early tomorrow, or maybe you'll bone up on the history of their favorite sports team so you have something to casually chat about. Alternatively, you could stay sane and change a single word in your interactions with them. Instead of asking for their opinion on your ideas, ask for their advice.
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Do People Need Small Talk to Be Happy?
The Atlantic: Security guard, truck driver, salesperson—year after year, these jobs appear on lists of the unhappiest careers. Although many factors can make a job dismal—unusual hours, low pay, no chance for advancement—these three gigs stand out for another reason: They’re characterized either by a lack of conversation or by obligatory but meaningless small talk. Psychologists have long said that connecting with others is central to well-being, but just how much conversation we require is under investigation. In one study, researchers eavesdropped on undergraduates for four days, then cataloged each overheard conversation as either “small talk” (“What do you have there? Popcorn?
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People Prefer Hiring “Naturals” Over Hardworking “Strivers”
When deciding which candidate to hire or what company to invest in, do we favor someone who has a history of hard work and perseverance or the hotshot with a natural talent? Findings from three studies conducted by University College London professor Chia-Jung Tsay suggest that when assessing people with equivalent levels of achievement and success, we’re predisposed to judge someone who’s a “natural” as more talented, more hirable, and more likely to succeed than someone who’s a “striver.” “[T]here exists the belief that certain achievements cannot be explained solely by perseverance and hard work—that natural talent plays a role, and some ‘have it’ and others ‘do not,’” Tsay writes.
