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How Financial Woes Change Your Brain (And Not for the Better)
TIME: Worrying about making ends meet, it seems, can occupy enough of the brain‘s finite thinking power that it makes it difficult to think clearly. According to the latest research published in Science, just thinking about shaky finances can drop IQ by the equivalent of 13 points. That may help to explain why poverty can become a vicious cycle, with lower income people tending to make seemingly irrational and risky decisions, particularly when it comes to money. ...
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“Seeing” Faces Through Touch
Our sense of touch can contribute to our ability to perceive faces, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “In daily life, we usually recognize faces through sight and almost never explore them through touch,” says lead researcher Kazumichi Matsumiya of Tohoku University in Japan.
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Get Off the Work Treadmill
Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, likens today’s work environment to running on a treadmill. People race to keep up with meetings, emails, and deadlines, while making no real progress – especially on creative tasks. Instead, it often would be better to do less, says Amabile, an APS Fellow. The single most important thing managers can do to enhance workplace creativity is “protecting at least 30 to 60 minutes each day for yourself and your people that’s devoted to quiet reflection,” she tells the Harvard Gazette. Amabile has spent the last 35 years researching life inside organizations and how it influences employees and their performance.
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Diagnosing Self-Destruction
NPR: And also, Matthew Nock is professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard in Cambridge. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Nock. ... NOCK: We know there's no simple answer, and as you were highlighting, we have identified risk factors for suicide, so we know that in the U.S. people who are white, people who are male, people with a mental disorder, people with a family history of suicide or mental disorders, are at higher risk. What we haven't done yet is developed an understanding of why it is that people with these characteristics are at high risk.
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Sweaty palms, racing heart help negotiate better
Asian News International: A new study suggests that sweaty palms and a racing heart may actually help some people in get a good deal while negotiating over the price of a new car. As researchers Ashley D. Brown and Jared R. Curhan of the Sloan School of Management at MIT demonstrate in two experiments, physiological arousal isn't always detrimental. "It turns out that the effect depends on whether you are someone who dreads or looks forward to negotiating," Brown said. "It's not inherently harmful." In their first experiment, Brown and Curhan assessed participants' attitudes toward negotiation.
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Wealthy Selfies: How Being Rich Increases Narcissism
TIME: The rich really are different — and, apparently more self-absorbed, according to the latest research. That goes against the conventional wisdom that the more people have, the more they appreciate their obligations to give back to others. Recent studies show, for example, that wealthier people are more likely to cut people off in traffic and to behave unethically in simulated business and charity scenarios. Earlier this year, statistics on charitable giving revealed that while the wealthy donate about 1.3% of their income to charity, the poorest actually give more than twice as much as a proportion of their earnings — 3.2%.
