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Telecommuting Works Best in Moderation, Science Shows
Organizations are increasingly offering employees a variety of work-from-home options despite sometimes conflicting evidence about the effectiveness of telecommuting. A comprehensive new report reveals that telecommuting can boost employee job satisfaction and productivity, but only when it’s carefully implemented with specific individual and organizational factors in mind. A key factor in determining the success of a telework plan, for example, is the proportion of time that an employee works remotely versus in the office.
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Self-Control Competes with Memory
Research findings suggest that memory encoding and self-control share and vie for common cognitive resources: inhibiting our response to a stimulus temporarily tips resources away from encoding new memories.
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After Trauma, New Strength as Well as New Scars
The Wall Street Journal: Who is happier, the winner of a lottery jackpot or someone confined to a wheelchair after an accident? The answer seems obvious—the lottery winner. But it isn’t that simple. For her 2013 doctoral thesis at Harvard, a young psychologist named H’Sien Hayward surveyed 50 individuals who had been paralyzed in accidents decades earlier, 50 lottery winners who had received an average prize of $6 million about a decade earlier, and a control group of 50 people who hadn’t experienced a major calamity or windfall.
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Frühchen sind später häufig arbeitslos (Preterm babies linked with less wealth)
The world: Are children born prematurely, they are later in life less economically successful. At least that is the result of a long-term study of the British University of Warwick near Coventry with more than 15,000 volunteers. The local group of researchers investigated the level of education, profession and the standard of living of 8573 people aged 42 years, who were born in 1958, and by 6698 people of the vintage 1970. These included both those who arrived early to the world as well as those that were not born prematurely.
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What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong?
Mother Jones: Leigh Robinson was out for a lunchtime walk one brisk day during the spring of 2013 when a call came from the principal at her school. Will, a third-grader with a history of acting up in class, was flipping out on the playground. He'd taken off his belt and was flailing it around and grunting. The recess staff was worried he might hurt someone. Robinson, who was Will's educational aide, raced back to the schoolyard. Will was "that kid." Every school has a few of them: that kid who's always getting into trouble, if not causing it. That kid who can't stay in his seat and has angry outbursts and can make a teacher's life hell. That kid the other kids blame for a recess tussle.
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Some Advice on Advice: Timing Matters
We all need some advice sometimes, from getting help on a new project at work to making decisions about how to save for retirement. The problem is, we’re not always so good about taking other people’s advice. “A large literature shows that people do not take advice particularly well, often overweighting their own opinions or ignoring the advice that they receive,” according to Duke University psychological scientist Christina Rader. In a recent study, Rader and colleagues Jack Soll and Richard Larrick investigated how timing affects people’s willingness to follow outside advice. Are we more likely to follow advice before or after we’ve already had the chance to make our own decision?
