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Noise: How to Overcome the High, Hidden Cost of Inconsistent Decision Making
Harvard Business Review: At a global financial services firm we worked with, a longtime customer accidentally submitted the same application file to two offices. Though the employees who reviewed the file were supposed to follow the same guidelines—and thus arrive at similar outcomes—the separate offices returned very different quotes. Taken aback, the customer gave the business to a competitor. From the point of view of the firm, employees in the same role should have been interchangeable, but in this case they were not. Unfortunately, this is a common problem.
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A Good Mood Is a Good Motivator
IYou need to alphabetize those files, transcribe last week’s meeting, and then look up some tax codes, but actually motivating yourself to take care of these tedious tasks can be a real challenge. According to new research from APS Fellow James J. Gross (Stanford University) and colleagues, people are much more likely to take on boring, unpleasant tasks when they’re in a good mood. Using a smartphone app to gather data, Gross and colleagues were able to monitor the moods of over 28,000 people in real time across an average of 27 days.
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The Perils of Power
NPR: It's "much safer to be feared than loved." So wrote Niccolò Machiavelli in The Prince,his seminal treatise on power. Many centuries later, we still see this idea in our culture – in cyber bullying and blustering politicians, in abusive CEOS and in television's antiheros. We tend to equate power with strength, and popularity with Mean Girls. But Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, wants to challenge this notion that powerful people are all Machiavellian sociopaths.
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Researchers Confront an Epidemic of Loneliness
The New York Times: BLACKPOOL, England — The woman on the other end of the phone spoke lightheartedly of spring and of her 81st birthday the previous week. “Who did you celebrate with, Beryl?” asked Alison, whose job was to offer a kind ear. “No one, I…” And with that, Beryl’s cheer turned to despair. ... John T. Cacioppo, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and director of the university’s Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, has been studying loneliness since the 1990s. He said loneliness is an aversive signal much like thirst, hunger or pain. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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September Is Your Second-Chance January
New York Magazine: September has a back-to-school vibe that’s hard to shake. This tends to be true even if it’s been many years since you were a student, and even if you currently have no school-age children at home. The writer Gretchen Rubin has observed that September is like the “other January,” in that many people come up with resolution-type goals for their post–Labor Day selves. “Even if you’re a big grown-up adult,” she said in a recent Facebook chat, the traditional start of the American school year “kind of has that sense of new beginning.” Your actual 2016 resolutions are likely long-forgotten, but that’s okay. September is your second chance.
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How to Pick the Fastest Line at the Supermarket
The New York Times: You dash into the supermarket for a few necessities. You figure it will be 10 minutes — tops — before you are done and on your way home. Then you get to the checkout lanes and they are brimming with shoppers. Your plan for a quick exit begins to evaporate. But all is not lost. For anyone who has ever had to stand in line (or if you are a New Yorker, you stand on line) at a supermarket, retailer, bank or anywhere else, here are some tips from experts for picking the line that will move the fastest. ... To some degree, waiting is all in your head. Research has found that, on average, people overestimated how long they waited in a line by 36 percent.
