-
“Seeing” Faces Through Touch
Our sense of touch can contribute to our ability to perceive faces, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “In daily life, we usually recognize faces through sight and almost never explore them through touch,” says lead researcher Kazumichi Matsumiya of Tohoku University in Japan.
-
Get Off the Work Treadmill
Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, likens today’s work environment to running on a treadmill. People race to keep up with meetings, emails, and deadlines, while making no real progress – especially on creative tasks. Instead, it often would be better to do less, says Amabile, an APS Fellow. The single most important thing managers can do to enhance workplace creativity is “protecting at least 30 to 60 minutes each day for yourself and your people that’s devoted to quiet reflection,” she tells the Harvard Gazette. Amabile has spent the last 35 years researching life inside organizations and how it influences employees and their performance.
-
Diagnosing Self-Destruction
NPR: And also, Matthew Nock is professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard in Cambridge. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Nock. ... NOCK: We know there's no simple answer, and as you were highlighting, we have identified risk factors for suicide, so we know that in the U.S. people who are white, people who are male, people with a mental disorder, people with a family history of suicide or mental disorders, are at higher risk. What we haven't done yet is developed an understanding of why it is that people with these characteristics are at high risk.
-
Sweaty palms, racing heart help negotiate better
Asian News International: A new study suggests that sweaty palms and a racing heart may actually help some people in get a good deal while negotiating over the price of a new car. As researchers Ashley D. Brown and Jared R. Curhan of the Sloan School of Management at MIT demonstrate in two experiments, physiological arousal isn't always detrimental. "It turns out that the effect depends on whether you are someone who dreads or looks forward to negotiating," Brown said. "It's not inherently harmful." In their first experiment, Brown and Curhan assessed participants' attitudes toward negotiation.
-
Wealthy Selfies: How Being Rich Increases Narcissism
TIME: The rich really are different — and, apparently more self-absorbed, according to the latest research. That goes against the conventional wisdom that the more people have, the more they appreciate their obligations to give back to others. Recent studies show, for example, that wealthier people are more likely to cut people off in traffic and to behave unethically in simulated business and charity scenarios. Earlier this year, statistics on charitable giving revealed that while the wealthy donate about 1.3% of their income to charity, the poorest actually give more than twice as much as a proportion of their earnings — 3.2%.
-
Poverty significantly saps our mental abilities say researchers
BBC: Being poor can sap a person's mental resources, research published in the journal Science suggests. The work, by an international team, demonstrates how poverty takes its toll on cognitive function, leaving less mental capacity for other tasks. The evidence comes from two studies carried out in India and the US. Previous data had shown a link between poverty and bad decision-making, but the root causes of this correlation were unclear. The US, British and Canadian team tried to shed light on this chicken-and-egg puzzle by isolating the financial factor from others that might interfere with the results.
