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Social Science Research Explores Psychological Effects Of Rituals
NPR: Research suggests when volunteers are taught and required to practice rituals, they demonstrate greater trust toward others who practice the same ritual, and diminished trust toward those who don't. Well, I was talking to Nicholas Hobson. He's a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto. Along with researchers Michael Norton, Francesca Gino and Michael Inzlicht, Hobson recently ran some experiments to measure the effect that rituals have on people. Now, since existing rituals like wearing the cheese head for Packers fans have complicated cultural meanings, that could... Read the whole story: NPR
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Damaging Your Phone, Accidentally on Purpose
The New York Times: Oops, you “accidentally” dropped your phone in the pool. Too bad you now have to buy an upgrade. Every so often, Apple comes out with an updated iPhone. It typically has new features and attracts a lot of buzz, which causes many consumers to lust for an upgrade. As it turns out, all that buzz can also lead to an increase in iPhone accidents. When a new model is available, according to recent research, people who have iPhones tend to become more careless with the phones they already own. ... Professor Bellezza embarked on the research because she was interested in “whether consumers break things on purpose because they need a justification,” she said.
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New Research From Clinical Psychological Science
A sample of new research exploring trauma narrative fragmentation in posttraumatic stress disorder, positivity offset in schizophrenia, stress and emotionally neutral memories, and interpersonal dysfunction in borderline personality disorder.
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A Face-to-Face Request Is 34 Times More Successful than an Email
Harvard Business Review: Imagine you need people to donate to a cause you care about. How do you get as many people as possible to donate? You could send an email to 200 of your friends, family members, and acquaintances. Or you could ask a few of the people you encounter in a typical day—face-to-face—to donate. Which method would mobilize more people for your cause? Despite the reach of email, asking in person is the significantly more effective approach; you need to ask six people in person to equal the power of a 200-recipient email blast. Still, most people tend to think the email ask will be more effective.
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Where did I put those keys? – the psychology of foraging
The Guardian: One of the big questions in vision research over the past 40 years has asked how we effectively search around our visual environment. Search is something that we unwittingly engage in every day of our lives – whether it’s looking for our car keys, scrabbling around for a lost contact lens, or rummaging around in a bag for a lost pen lid. But the way in which researchers have classically tested the limits of visual search have looked very different to what we might think of as search in the real world. ...
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How Loneliness Begets Loneliness
The Atlantic: “I’m clearly a textbook case of the silent majority of middle-aged men who won’t admit they’re starved for friendship, even if all signs point to the contrary,” wrote Billy Baker in his recent exploration of male loneliness in The Boston Globe. Perhaps one reason the piece made so many internet rounds is just how many people could relate: Last year Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned that Americans are “facing an epidemic of loneliness and social isolation.” ... John Cacioppo: When you look across studies, you get levels anywhere from 25 to 48 percent [of people reporting being lonely].
