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How Headlines Change the Way We Think
The New Yorker: "Why Headlines Matter.” “Misleading Headlines Can Lead You Astray.” “How What You Read Affects What You See.” “How Bad Headlines Make Bad Memories.” “Eleven Reasons Headlines Are Important.” “You’ll Never Believe How Important an Accurate Headline Is.” Those are all possible titles for this piece that I discussed with my editor. And, actually, the one that we picked may be the most important part of this article. By now, everyone knows that a headline determines how many people will read a piece, particularly in this era of social media. But, more interesting, a headline changes the way people read an article and the way they remember it.
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Think You Found the Perfect Gift? Think Again
The New York Times: As you scour shopping websites and store aisles this season, captive to that frenzied, loving and exasperated hunt for perfect holiday gifts, here’s a little gift, of sorts, from researchers who study gift giving and receiving: Think gift card. Because the less specific the gift, the more it will be appreciated. You shudder, you recoil. But the sad truth is that while gift cards constitute a minority of holiday gifts, according to the National Retail Federation, they have been the most popular gift request since 2007. But you know your recipient best, right?
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The World Is Not Falling Apart
Slate: It’s a good time to be a pessimist. ISIS, Crimea, Donetsk, Gaza, Burma, Ebola, school shootings, campus rapes, wife-beating athletes, lethal cops—who can avoid the feeling that things fall apart, the center cannot hold?
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Political Extremists Are Resistant to One Kind of Bias
New York Magazine: We often think of political extremists as deeply biased people, and for good reason: They're stuck in their views and no amount of evidence is going to sway them. A new study in Psychological Science, though, offers an interesting example of how their certitude might protect them from one particular kind of bias. For the study, a team lead by Mark J. Brandt of Tilburg University in the Netherlands asked a bunch of people to participate in a so-called "anchoring task." This is a task in which researchers ask you to estimate a certain value based on a piece of information they give you.
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Collaborate With Stanford Researchers on Attitudes
Professor Jon Krosnick (Stanford University, Departments of Communication, Political Science, and Psychology) and Ellen Konar (Stanford University, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences) invite applications from graduate students enrolled in PhD programs in business programs or in the social and behavioral sciences to collaborate with them in conducting analyses of data to assess the relative efficacy and validity of customer experience measures in predicting company performance and in writing up results for publication in academic journals.About 10 years ago, companies looking to understand customer feedback were offered a simple tool that was billed as “The One Number You Ne…
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Hugs help protect against the common cold, research finds
PBS: Flu season is upon us, and doctors are predicting that this year’s epidemic could be especially severe. What steps are you taking to protect yourself from disease this winter? Stocking up on hand sanitizer? Chugging orange juice? Avoiding handshakes and crowded subway cars? How about hugging your friends? Wait, what? A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that frequent hugging helps reduce individuals’ susceptibility to infections associated with stress, and reduces the severity of symptoms if an infection is contracted by providing increased social support.
