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Tall, dark and stable
The Economist: CLEARLY, a person’s decisions are determined by circumstances. Just how closely they are determined, however, has only recently become apparent. Experiments conducted over the past few years have revealed that giving someone an icy drink at a party leads him to believe he is getting the cold shoulder from fellow guests, that handing over a warm drink gives people a sense of warmth from others, and—most astonishingly—that putting potential voters in chairs which lean slightly to the left causes them to become more agreeable towards policies associated with the left of the political spectrum. The latest of these studies also looks at the effect of furniture.
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Exposure to Sexual Content in Popular Movies Predicts Sexual Behavior in Adolescence
Intuitively it simply makes sense: exposure to sexual content in movies at an early age probably influences adolescents' sexual behavior. And yet, even though a great deal of research has shown that adolescents who watch more risky behaviors in popular movies, like drinking or smoking, are more likely to drink and smoke themselves, surprisingly little research has examined whether movies influence adolescents' sexual behaviors. Until now. Over six years, psychological scientists examined whether or not seeing sex on the big screen translates into sex in the real world for adolescents.
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How Stereotypes Can Drive Women To Quit Science
NPR: Walk into any tech company or university math department, and you'll likely see a gender disparity: Fewer women than men seem to go into fields involving science, engineering, technology and mathematics. Over the years, educators, recruiters and government authorities have bemoaned the gender gap and warned that it can have dire consequences for American competitiveness and continued technological dominance. It isn't just that fewer women choose to go into these fields. Even when they go into these fields and are successful, women are more likely than men to quit.
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Extra Credit: Teach your children well about STEM
Wisconsin State Journal: Parents can play a key role in swelling the ranks of students pursuing careers in science, math, engineering and technology (STEM) fields, according to a new UW study published in Psychological Science. Increasing interest in STEM fields is crucial to developing a strong 21st century U.S. workforce, but interest in science and math begins to wane in high school when students choose not to take advanced courses in those subjects, according to the study. While most efforts to change that have focused on things schools can do to increase student interest in STEM classes, researchers at UW demonstrated the influence parents can have.
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What Type of Worker Are You? Your Next Boss May Want to Know
TIME: At one point or another, many of us have been stuck with a job that wasn’t necessarily in our field of interest. That can be bad for the employee in question, of course — but a new psychological study shows that it’s bad for business, as well. Employees who are interested in their jobs consistently perform better than their surly peers. They are more likely to help out coworkers; are less likely to leave their jobs; and even commit less deviant behavior in the workplace, according to the study. If this seems obvious, well, it kind of is.
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Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals
The New York Times: WHO is happier about life — liberals or conservatives? The answer might seem straightforward. After all, there is an entire academic literature in the social sciences dedicated to showing conservatives as naturally authoritarian, dogmatic, intolerant of ambiguity, fearful of threat and loss, low in self-esteem and uncomfortable with complex modes of thinking. And it was the candidate Barack Obama in 2008 who infamously labeled blue-collar voters “bitter,” as they “cling to guns or religion.” Obviously, liberals must be happier, right? Wrong.
