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The Sound of Intellect
Richard Nelson Bolles, a former Episcopal pastor, decided to self-publish his advice for job hunters in 1970, in the midst of a tough job market for newly-minted college graduates. The handbook—What Color is Your Parachute?—immediately gained popularity by word-of-mouth, and was soon on its way to the best-seller list. In the decades since, it has become the bible for young professionals entering the world of work. It has been revised almost every year, and has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
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Analysis of Social Cognition Predicts Dangerous Drivers
A team of psychological scientists in the Czech Republic is looking at the brains of bad drivers to understand why some of us flout the rules--putting others at risk of serious injury or death--while the rest of us abide by them. In a recent study published in the journal NeuroImage, lead author Jana Zelinková of the Central European Institute of Technology found that while watching videos on traffic safety, people with a history of dangerous driving show relatively less activation in brain areas associated with social cognition and empathy compared to their law-abiding counterparts.
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Americans Overestimate Class Mobility
Pacific Standard: America, we learn as children, is the land of opportunity—a place where anyone who works hard and saves their money can climb their way into a higher social class. While statistics do not bear out this belief, newly published research suggests it remains stubbornly entrenched in our minds. Across four studies, Americans offered “substantial and consistent overestimates of class mobility, overestimating the amount of income mobility and educational access by a wide margin,” write University of Illinois psychologists Michael Kraus and Jacinth Tan.
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Companies Wanting Immediate Sales Should Pass On Super Bowl Ads
NPR: Researchers asked this question: Is a company better off spending big money for a Super Bowl ad or buying several spots for that same amount of money at a less expensive time of the year? Well, there are a couple of different reasons. One, Geisenberg thinks that being in sort of the hyper-excited state that people are as they're watching these big sporting events might not actually make you very conducive to processing the content of the ads. But there's also something else. Sascha Topolinski in Germany recently conducted a study. He wasn't studying the Super Bowl, but his research is spot on when it comes to describing how most Americans watch the Super Bowl.
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The psychology of why sports fans see their teams as extensions of themselves
The Washington Post: Two weeks ago, a man who earns his living by chasing other men in pursuit of a leather prolate spheroid handed a team staffer a football that felt soft. The staffer reported this unusual occurrence to his supervisor, who reported it to his supervisor, who reported it to his supervisor, and then all hell broke loose. Ever since, the nation has been held in thrall to the spectacle of sports fans debating the ideal gas law . The scandal has acquired its own name, DeflateGate, and let’s be real: You have an opinion on this matter, and I have an opinion on this matter, and people who hate prolate spheroids and listen only to public radio have an opinion on this matter.
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There’s a Difference Between Being Generous and Being a Doormat
New York Magazine: It is the giving-est time of year, and so it seems very timely indeed that the latest episode of "The Psychology Podcast" features a chat between University of Pennsylvania psychologists Scott Barry Kaufman and Adam Grant about Grant’s work on givers and takers. These are his terms for the people who enjoy being generous and helping others, and the people who are more motivated by personal gain; he wrote an entire book on the subject, published last year.
