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.: "

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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."