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The Surprising Link Between the Economy and Narcissism
The Wall Street Journal: Is there a link between narcissism and recessions? That’s the question raised by a recent paper published in the journal Psychological Science, which suggested that coming of age in a recession may lessen the chance of someone becoming a narcissist—that is, having a grandiose sense of self-worth, entitlement and superiority. The Wall Street Journal spoke to the paper’s author, Emily C. Bianchi, an assistant professor at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, about her work and its implications for millennials, CEO pay and people’s satisfaction with their work. Following are edited excerpts from the conversation. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
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The big problem with one of the most popular assumptions about the poor
The Washington Post: In the late 1960s, Walter Mischel, a researcher at Stanford University, invited several hundred children to participate in a game in which they were given a choice: They could eat one sweet right away, or wait and have two a little later. Initially, the goal was simple: to see how and why people (kids in this case) delayed gratification. But after the end of the experiment, Mischel began to check in with as many of the participants' families as he could, and over the following decade he learned that his little experiment probably had much larger implications than he had anticipated. ...
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How Collectivism Protects Against Contagious Fear
An outbreak of Ebola in the Republic of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone that began in 2014 made headlines around the world, as the number of individuals affected continued to climb. Ebola is a viral disease that can be transmitted to humans through animal and insect bites, but can also be spread from person to person through bodily fluids. The severity of the outbreak in West Africa, combined with the knowledge that the virus could spread through human contact, led many people in parts of the world that were actually at low risk of an outbreak to express xenophobic attitudes.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: The Missing-Phoneme Effect in Aural Prose Comprehension Jean Saint-Aubin, Raymond M. Klein, Mireille Babineau, John Christie, and David W. Gow, Jr. Studies repeatedly show that when people read text for comprehension while searching for a target letter, they miss a great number of the target letters that appear in function words such as "the" and "of." In this study, one group of native French speakers read two texts for comprehension while searching for a target letter; another group listened to a narration of the same two texts while listening for the target letter's corresponding phoneme.
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Google Enlists Psychological Science to Fight Office Snack Attacks
The way to an employee’s heart might be through their stomach as much as their wallet. One recent survey of 1,000 people found that free food at work was associated with a 20% higher likelihood of feeling extremely or very happy with their jobs. Silicon Valley tech companies have become famous for their lavish, free employee snacking options. At Google’s main campus in Mountain View, employees have access to over 30 different cafés serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as a variety of snacks. Google’s Toronto campus even has a “baconators” club where trained chefs prepare custom flavored bacon (as an example, Thai lemongrass, basil, and chili was one past flavor).
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Graduating and Looking for Your Passion? Just Be Patient
The New York Times: For all their grandeur and euphoria, graduation ceremonies can be harrowing. Until that momentous day, you’re a student whose job is to do what your teacher asks. Now you have to ask things of yourself — but what? If you’re relying on a commencement speaker to set your compass, you may still be confused at day’s end. In my experience, it’s common to hear “Follow your passion” from the podium. This is great counsel if, in fact, you know what that passion is. But what if you don’t? Young graduates might imagine that discovering your passion happens the way it does in a movie: with a flash of insight and a trumpet blast.
