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Job Satisfaction Tends to Increase with Age
As we get older, does our work become more satisfying? New research illuminates an intriguing conundrum: Job satisfaction tends to improve as we get older but also tends to decrease the longer we stay at a particular job. “We demonstrated that age and tenure have opposite relationships with job satisfaction, such that job satisfaction increased as people aged yet decreased as tenure advanced — and received a boost when people moved to a new organization, thus starting the cycle anew,” writes psychological scientists Shoshana Dobrow Riza (London School of Economics and Political Science), Yoav Ganzach (Tel Aviv University), and Yihao Liu (University of Florida).
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How To Watch A Debate Without Bias
NPR: The first of three debates between Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will take place Monday night. The debates, sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, have the stated mission of offering "the best possible information to viewers and listeners" in the lead-up to the general election. There's just one problem. Decades of research suggests that voting decisions are influenced by quite a few factors beyond the "best possible information." For instance, people's perceptions of politicians can be influenced by their height: Taller men are, on average, perceived to be more competent. Using data from past U.S.
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Get Yourself to Do Stuff by Appealing to Your Own Sense of Pride
New York Magazine: A story at the start of Take Pride, a forthcoming book by University of British Columbia psychologist Jessica Tracy, is a typical one of youthful aimlessness, at least at first. Tracy writes about her post-college life in the late 1990s, when she moved across the country to San Francisco and got a job as a barista in a cozy cafe. It was a pleasant life, filled with lots of people to talk to and lots of time to read, along with few anxieties or responsibilities.
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When Economic Growth Doesn’t Make People Happy
The Atlantic: In 2013, UNICEF released a report comparing the well-being of children in 29 of the world’s most advanced nations. The report compiled data on health, safety, education, behavioral factors, living environments, material well-being, and subjective “life satisfaction” surveys from children themselves. The United States landed near the bottom on almost all measures, ranking 26th out of 29 countries; only Lithuania, Latvia, and Romania performed worse. ... In a 2009 study of 450,000 Americans, the economists Angus Deaton and Daniel Kahneman discovered that for Americans happiness seemed to level off at a household income level of $75,000.
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Hillary Clinton’s ‘Angry’ Face
The New York Times: When Hillary Clinton participated in a televised forum on national security and military issues this month, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, tweeted that she was “angry and defensive the entire time — no smile and uncomfortable.” Mrs. Clinton, evidently undaunted by Mr. Priebus’s opinion on when she should and shouldn’t smile, tweeted back, “Actually, that’s just what taking the office of president seriously looks like.” The implication of Mr. Priebus’s comment was a familiar one: A woman making stern-looking facial movements must be angry or upset.
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’Power Posing’ Co-author: ‘I Do Not Believe That ‘Power Pose’ Effects Are Real’
New York Magazine: It would be hard to come up with a recent psychological idea that has stormed the mainstream more quickly and effectively than “power posing” — the idea that if you adopt assertive, “powerful” poses it can have various positive psychological and physiological effects that may help you during negotiations, public speaking, and other high-pressure situations. The idea comes from a 2010 paper published in Psychological Science co-authored by Dana Carney and Andy Yap, then of Columbia University, and Amy Cuddy of Harvard.
