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How We Assign Blame for Corporate Crimes
Yahoo! Canada: Whether the public blames Wall Street or its bankers for bad decisions depends a lot on the group's level of cohesion as well as its mindfulness, or ability to "think," suggests a new study. The researchers wanted to find out how people choose to blame large collectives, such as a major corporation, political party, governmental entity, professional sports team or other organization, while still treating members of those groups as unique individuals. They found that the more people judge a united group as having a "mind"— the ability to think, intend or plan — the less they judge each member as having their own capacity to complete acts requiring such a mind.
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Leaning to the left makes the world seem smaller
NewScientist: If something has gone down in your estimation, check your stance. Leaning to the left encourages people to underestimate everything from the height of buildings to the number of Michael Jackson chart-toppers. To find out whether body positions influence value estimation, Anita Eerland and her colleagues at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands asked 33 people to guess the numerical answer to questions while stood on a Wii-console balance board. A third of the questions were asked while the volunteers were perfectly upright.
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Nationalister mer nöjda med sina liv
Metro Sverige: Personer som är stolta över sitt land är mer nöjda med sina egna liv än andra, konstaterar forskare i Psychological Science. Men det finns tydliga skillnader mellan olika typer av nationalism. De som var stolta över sitt lands lagar, institutioner och den kulturella mångfalden, var överlag mer nöjda än dem som var stolta på grund av landets ursprung, religion och historia. Studien bygger på en enkät till över 40 000 personer från 31 länder. Read the whole story: Metro Sverige
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Awakening Your Inner Materialist
The Huffington Post: I don't see myself as especially materialistic, and you probably don't see yourself that way either. The fact is, I don't know anyone who actually takes pride in acquiring more and more stuff, and many of my friends decry the commercialization of the holiday season. That's a good thing, because all the evidence says that people who are preoccupied with possessions are not very happy people. Consumerism is linked to anxiety, lousy relationships and poor mental and physical health. But let's not get too self-righteous quite yet. We may not derive our core sense of self-worth from what we buy and own, but does that mean we're immune to all the cues in our consumer culture?
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¿Por qué no somos ya más inteligentes?: los perjuicios de tener una supermente
ABC Espana: Los seres humanos nos esforzamos en mejorar nuestra memoria, inteligencia y atención de múltiples maneras, desde tomar una taza de café que nos despeje la mente hasta consumir medicamentos psicoestimulantes. Pero quizás, aunque parezca contradictorio, ser más inteligentes no nos convenga como especie. Un nuevo artículo publicado en Psychological Science, una revista de la Asociación para la Ciencia Psicológica de EE.UU., advierte de que hay límites en cómo obtener la inteligencia y de que cualquier aumento en la capacidad de pensar puede traer algún problema añadido. Read the whole story: ABC Espana
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Why It Really Is Better to Give Than to Receive
The Wall Street Journal: The Beatles famously sang money can't buy love. But can it buy happiness? Satisfaction? Appreciation? These questions surfaced in my mind the other day as I raced to finish—um, I mean start—my holiday shopping. For many of you, the hunt for the perfect gift began early this year. A record-breaking 226 million shoppers tore out of the gate over Black Friday weekend, spending an estimated $52.4 billion collectively—another record—at stores and websites, all in the hopes of spreading a little joy to family members, friends and assorted acquaintances. Unfortunately, our good intentions notwithstanding, research suggests that by and large we miss the mark.
