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You Have More Influence Over People Than You Think
Cosmopolitan: Do you hesitate to ask people for favors simply because you assume they'll say no? A new study suggests others are far more likely to do your bidding than you probably think. For 10 years, psychologist, Vanessa K. Bohns, Ph.D., and colleagues from Cornell University asked hundreds of participants in multiple studies to pose random requests to over 14,000 strangers. (Among them: "Can I borrow your phone?" "Will you lie for more?" and, "Would you sponsor me in a race?") ... Why, then, does just saying what you want still seem so ominous?
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Why this Wharton wunderkind wants leaders to replace their intuition with evidence
The Washington Post: It’s just hours before kickoff on Super Bowl Sunday, but Adam Grant is talking about baseball. More specifically, he’s talking about a psychology study that discovered the most frequent base stealers tend to be younger siblings. “I hate this evidence as a card-carrying firstborn,” he told the crowd sipping cocktails at author Daniel Pink’s Cleveland Park home in Washington, there to mark the release of Grant’s book “Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World.” But the study shows it’s probably true, Grant says. “A younger sibling is more than 10 times as likely to try and succeed at stealing a base.” ...
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Infants’ Brain Activity Shows Signs of Social Thinking
An innovative collaboration between neuroscientists and developmental psychologists that investigated how infants' brains process other people's action provides evidence directly linking neural responses from the motor system to overt social behavior in infants. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study involved thirty-six 7-month-old infants, who were each tested while wearing a cap that used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain activity. During the experiment, each infant observed an actor reach for one of two toys. Immediately after, the baby was allowed to select one of the same toys.
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Who’s ‘They’?
The New York Times Magazine: We are witnessing a great explosion in the way that human beings are allowed to express their gender identities. We are also hearing a lot of awkward conversations. What are we supposed to ... call everyone? A recent scene on HBO’s “Girls” riffed on this problem, drawing a linguistic fault line down a Brooklyn street. On one side is a no-frills coffee joint run by Ray Ploshansky, the show’s resident grumpy old man. (He’s, like, 38.) Across the street, a hip new cafe springs up and instantly hoovers up Ray’s clientele. When Ray crosses the road to eyeball the competition, he encounters a barista he can’t quite size up.
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What I Learned From Tickling Apes
The New York Times: TICKLING a juvenile chimpanzee is a lot like tickling a child. The ape has the same sensitive spots: under the armpits, on the side, in the belly. He opens his mouth wide, lips relaxed, panting audibly in the same “huh-huh-huh” rhythm of inhalation and exhalation as human laughter. The similarity makes it hard not to giggle yourself. The ape also shows the same ambivalence as a child. He pushes your tickling fingers away and tries to escape, but as soon as you stop he comes back for more, putting his belly right in front of you. At this point, you need only to point to a tickling spot, not even touching it, and he will throw another fit of laughter. Laughter?
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Should we teach obscure presidents like Millard Fillmore?
The Washington Post: Should we teach the presidency of Millard Fillmore? What do we lose if we don't? According to research by human memory expert Henry Roediger, III at Washington University in St. Louis, only 8 percent of college students can list Fillmore when asked to write down the names of U.S. presidents. Yet, though changes in education—including the rise of Common Core standards—have meant fewer of today's students are required to memorize the name of every commander-in-chief, it turns out that previous generations were no better at recalling the 13th president.
