Can you make yourself more persistent just by looking at a bottle of Gatorade? - Barking up the wrong tree

Can you make yourself more persistent just by looking at a bottle of Gatorade? - Barking up the wrong tree: visual exposure to a sports drink, relative to a spring water control condition, led to greater persistence on physical tasks, consistent with the well-known association between sports drinks and endurance.

Marginal Revolution: A rainfall theory of democracy

Marginal Revolution: A rainfall theory of democracy

We argue that settled agriculture requires moderate levels of precipitation, and that settled agriculture eventually gave birth to the fundamental institutions that under-gird today’s stable democracies.

Going on a Diet? Start Paying in Cash - NYTimes.com

Going on a Diet? Start Paying in Cash - NYTimes.com

Paying with credit or debit cards makes people more likely to make impulsive, unhealthy food purchases, according to a new study in The Journal of Consumer Research.

Those with a desk job, please stand up

Those with a desk job, please stand up

But when we sit, researchers say, important biological processes take a nap. An enzyme that vacuums dangerous fat out of the bloodstream only works properly when a body is upright. Standing also seems to ward off deadly heart disease, burn calories, increase how well insulin lowers glucose and produce the good brand of cholesterol. Most of these processes occur - or don't - regardless of whether someone exercises. Human beings need to stand.

Our Love/Hate Relationship with Carrots and Sticks - NYTimes.com

Our Love/Hate Relationship with Carrots and Sticks - NYTimes.com

The better, but perhaps less arresting, message is that “Carrots and Sticks (like chemotherapy) are powerful medicines that sometimes work.” It behooves us to figure out when.

Leaning to the Left Makes People Lean Left - NYTimes.com

Leaning to the Left Makes People Lean Left - NYTimes.com

"In three studies we observed that spatially orienting people towards their left or their right correspondingly influenced their political attitudes. These results lend support to the notion that metaphor influences the way we represent and reason about abstract domains. In particular, due to the abstractness of political discourse, the metaphors we choose when discussing politics can impact our attitudes in the political arena."

It’s all more chance than choice.

It’s all more chance than choice.: "

"

Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.com

Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.com: An hour of study tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now: such so-called spacing improves later recall, without requiring students to put in more overall study effort or pay more attention, dozens of studies have found.

Does It Pay to Be Optimistic? - NYTimes.com

Does It Pay to Be Optimistic? - NYTimes.com "dispositional optimists experience significantly better job search outcomes than pessimists with similar skills"

Dan Ariely � Blog Archive Humans and the slime mould �

Dan Ariely � Blog Archive Humans and the slime mould Even for slime mould relativity matters, suggesting that it is a very basic form of decision making!

The Economics Of Trust - Forbes.com

The Economics Of Trust - Forbes.com "Trust matters, but if you really want to bask in its effects, make sure you start at the top of the heap."

Heavy, rough and hard – how the things we touch affect our judgments and decisions | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine

Heavy, rough and hard – how the things we touch affect our judgments and decisions

Joshua Ackerman from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has shown that the properties that we feel through touch – texture, hardness, weight – can all influence the way we think.

Managers: Hired To Be Fired

Managers: Hired To Be Fired: "We miss the effects of randomness in life because when we assess the world, we tend to see what we expect to see. We in effect define degree of talent by degree of success and then reinforce our feelings of causality by noting the correlation. That’s why although there is sometimes little difference in ability between a wildly successful person and one who is not successful, there is usually a big difference in how they are viewed."

This column will change your life: Are you an Asker or a Guesser? | Life and style | The Guardian

Are you an Asker or a Guesser?: "We are raised, the theory runs, in one of two cultures. In Ask culture, people grow up believing they can ask for anything – a favour, a pay rise– fully realising the answer may be no. In Guess culture, by contrast, you avoid "putting a request into words unless you're pretty sure the answer will be yes… A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won't have to make the request directly; you'll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.""

BBC News - Brain 'splits to multi-task'

BBC News - Brain 'splits to multi-task': "An inability to deal with more than two things at a time may be 'hard-wired' into our brain, research suggests."

A C.E.O. Beauty Contest

A C.E.O. Beauty Contest - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com Chief executive officers look more competent than the general populace

What Can Cricket Data Tell Us About Labor Luck? - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com

What Can Cricket Data Tell Us About Labor Luck?: "luck might figure more widely in labor market outcomes than commonly believed."

How to quickly and easily make people like you more: - Barking up the wrong tree

How to quickly and easily make people like you more: - Barking up the wrong tree: "Results revealed that mimickers and mimickees became more affectively attuned to each other due to bidirectional influences of mimicry. Additionally, both mimickers and mimickees reported more feelings of having bonded with each other and rated the interaction as smoother."

"The Genius in All of Us" - What to Read - Salon.com

"The Genius in All of Us" - What to Read - Salon.com What would education, the workplace and government look like if we behaved as if we truly believed that nobody is born to mediocrity? "Human talent and intelligence are not permanently in short supply like fossil fuel," Shenk writes, "but potentially plentiful like wind power."

Caltech Scientists Find First Physiological Evidence of Brain's Response to Inequality - Caltech

Caltech Scientists Find First Physiological Evidence of Brain's Response to Inequality - Caltech: "Specifically, the team found that the reward centers in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does. The surprising thing? This activity pattern holds true even if the brain being looked at is in the rich person's head, rather than the poor person's."

How to make yourself happier in just a few seconds: - Barking up the wrong tree

How to make yourself happier in just a few seconds: - Barking up the wrong tree: "thinking about the absence of a positive event from one's life would improve affective states more than thinking about the presence of a positive event"

Schneier on Security: The Psychology of Being Scammed

Schneier on Security: The Psychology of Being Scammed

The paper describes a dozen different con scenarios -- entertaining in itself -- and then lists and explains six general psychological principles that con artists use

Does darkness increase dishonesty?: - Barking up the wrong tree

Does darkness increase dishonesty?: - Barking up the wrong tree: "In several experiments, researchers found that light levels influence selfish behavior. People who were placed in a dimly lit room were significantly more likely to cheat than people placed in a well-lit room. Likewise, people who were asked to wear sunglasses were less generous in a sharing game than people who were asked to wear clear glasses. This pattern appears to be the result of an increased sense of anonymity in lower light levels, even though light levels did not confer any actual increase in anonymity"

How to tell if somebody is lying: - Barking up the wrong tree

How to tell if somebody is lying: - Barking up the wrong tree: "'Lying taxes the mind,' Wiseman explains. 'It involves thinking about what is plausible. People tend to repeat phrases, give shorter answers, and hesitate more. They will try to distance themselves from the lie, so use far more impersonal language. Liars often reduce the number of times that they say words like 'I', 'me', and 'mine'. To detect deception, look for aural signs associated with having to think hard.'

According to the Canadian Journal of Police and Security Services, another side-effect of lying that forensic interrogators will look for is the avoidance of verbal contractions - using 'I am' instead of 'I'm' and so on. Nature reported another study by Ioannis Pavlidis of Honeywell Laboratories in Minnesota. He established that many people blush when they are telling a lie - a subtle, but detectable, phenomenon. Pavlidis has developed a thermal-imaging technique that he says detects deceit by recording thermal patterns in people's faces. He's shown this technique to have an accuracy rate comparable to that of polygraph examination by experts, and says his method has vast potential for application in rapid or remote security screening (at airports and border crossings, for example), without the need for skilled staff or physical contact."

The Truth About Lie-Detection – What Works And What Doesn't: - Barking up the wrong tree

The Truth About Lie-Detection – What Works And What Doesn't: - Barking up the wrong tree

German scholars have pioneered Criteria Based Content Analysis (CBCA). Armed with a 19-point list of identifiers, analysts ask if the story was incoherent or disorganized. They count the number of details, how frequently the storyteller self-corrected wrong facts, or admitted not knowing something about his own story.

According to CBCA proponents, liars tell stories in chronological order to keep the facts straight. They rarely correct a misstatement, and they're less willing to say, “I don’t know.” Some scholars using CBCA can accurately predict lying as high as 78 percent of the time. But that's nowhere near perfect, and it’s not a method easily used in real-time conversation.

Another intriguing lie-detection test is Reality Monitoring. The idea behind Reality Monitoring is that a truth-teller will, without prompting, relay spatial and sensory details. They won't just say where the man stood in the room: they'll include if the man was near or far from the window, how the room smelled, the sudden bang of door slamming. Liars are creating a story intended to make sense, so they rely on logic to supply the details. For example, a truth-teller might say, “I remember he had an umbrella, because it was dripping on the floor,” while the liar would say, “Well, he must have had an umbrella with him because it rained earlier.” The liar’s story is based in a rational inference, compared to the truth-teller’s sensation. Reality Monitoring, like CBCA, has shown some surprising success.

How Vacations Affect Your Happiness - Well Blog - NYTimes.com

How Vacations Affect Your Happiness - Well Blog - NYTimes.com: "The study, published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life, showed that the largest boost in happiness comes from the simple act of planning a vacation. In the study, the effect of vacation anticipation boosted happiness for eight weeks."

If it’s easy to read, it’s easy to do, pretty, good, and true - Vol. 23, Part 2 ( February 2010)

The Psycholoist: If it’s easy to read, it’s easy to do, pretty, good, and true - Vol. 23, Part 2 ( February 2010)

We perceive things to be more appealing, easier to handle and more efficient based on how simple they are to understand - even when this is based on irrelevant or superficial properties - like its name or the font it is described in.

The Facebook effect on first impressions | PressDemocrat.com

The Facebook effect on first impressions | PressDemocrat.com: "New research by a Sonoma State University professor and a colleague with the University of Texas shows that those conclusions can be surprisingly accurate in a photograph, depending on how one poses."

Political Science: What Being Neat or Messy Says about Political Leanings: Scientific American

Political Science: What Being Neat or Messy Says about Political Leanings: Scientific American: "Researchers from the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles found that 72 percent of the variation in voter turnout is genetic, according to a study in July's American Political Science Review (APSR)"

Massive bonuses might actually cause poor performance - The New York Times

Massive bonuses might actually cause poor performance - The New York Times

The group offered the highest bonus did worse than the other two groups - in every single task. On top of that, the people offered medium bonuses performed no better or worse than those offered low bonuses.

Drilling Down - Vowel Sounds Influence Consumers’ Perception of Prices - NYTimes.com

Drilling Down - Vowel Sounds Influence Consumers’ Perception of Prices - NYTimes.com

Researchers have known for 80 years about a symbolic connection between speech and size: back-of-the-mouth vowels like the “o” in “two” make people think of large sizes, whereas people associate front-of-the-mouth vowels like “ee” with diminutiveness. Marketers can use this effect to make consumers think a discount is bigger or smaller than it truly is, according to a study soon to be published in The Journal of Consumer Research by Keith Coulter of Clark University and Robin Coulter of the University of Connecticut.

Top 10 Common Faults In Human Thought - Listverse

Top 10 Common Faults In Human Thought - Listverse

Sex and shopping – it's a guy thing - life - 01 January 2010 - New Scientist

Sex and shopping – it's a guy thing - life - 01 January 2010 - New Scientist

much of human economic behaviour is engendered by motives of costly signalling to display our personal qualities to potential mates and other social partners. These motives are finely tuned and very specific. They show systematic sex differences, and are influenced by apparent mating opportunities. They reveal a human display psychology with intricate design features shaped over millennia of evolution, to attract mates and friends through certain kinds of costly, risky behaviours that reliably signal certain desirable traits.