Do people like us better when we're distracted?
Seems like it. It's not that being distracted isn't off-putting, but when distracted we're less negative, less complex and more personal in our speech. We also encourage the other person to talk more.
From James Pennebaker's book The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us:
...distracted pairs actually showed slightly higher style matching than the non-distracted pair. Even odder, they tended to report liking each other more. In terms of actual word use, the distracted students were less negative, less complex, and more personal than non-distracted writers.
There have been very few times in my career that I didn’t believe my own results. It just didn’t make sense to me that style matching increases when talking to a multitasker. So I took things into my own hands and called two former students and asked if they would mind participating in a language project. The deal would be that we would have an informal talk on the phone that would be recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. The talk would actually be made up of three five-minute segments, and after each segment, they would complete a brief questionnaire. Both agreed to the rules. What they didn’t know was that on one of the three segments, I would be sitting in my office madly doing arithmetic problems as fast as I could.
The phone calls started and we talked about work, our lives, our mutual friends, and other issues of the day. During the period I was working on the arithmetic problems, I recall thinking, “Wow, I’m really good at this. I’m as socially adept when I’m busy as when I’m not.” Later, when I transcribed the conversations, I was startled to see how differently I spoke while engaged in the arithmetic problems. I stuttered and repeated myself. I deflected any complicated questions and tried to get the other person to talk more. Similar to the participants in Yla’s experiment, I tended to laugh more and used more positive language in general.
Both of my students rated the distraction phases of the conversation as enjoyable as the other parts. In fact, the LSM measures indicated that we matched in our language use during the distraction period at rates as high or higher than during the nondistraction periods. What happened, however, is that both students started speaking to me in the ways I was speaking to them. As I psychologically distanced myself from the conversation, my conversational partners did the same. What intrigues me is that none of us were consciously aware of it. In fact, after the phone calls, I discussed the conversations with both students, asking their perceptions. One said that she was vaguely aware that I was slightly more distracted during the arithmetic problems but said, “You often are distracted in phone calls.” Oooh.
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Can you improve your memory just by saying things out loud?
From PsyBlog:
According to MacLeod et al., saying a word out loud, or at least mouthing it, improves memory by increasing its distinctiveness, i.e. making it unusual compared to others.
Across 8 experiments in which participants were asked to read and remember lists of both words and nonwords, the researchers found memory improvements sometimes greater than 10%.
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When does the word "we" indicate a good relationship? When can it save your life?
Using "we" when talking to a third party about the relationship was a very good sign. "You" words were more common in toxic conversations and bad relationships.
The more a heart patient's spouse used we-words during an interview, the healthier the patient was in six months.
From James Pennebaker's book The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us:
A couple’s use of we-words when talking to a third party predicts a satisfying relationship. However, we use for couples talking only to each other rarely predicts the quality of the relationship.
In the laboratory, when talking about marital disagreements, we-words indicated a good relationship whereas the use of you-words suggested problems. The use of you-words, such as you, your, and yourself, were most apparent in toxic conversations—usually where the two participants were accusing each other of various shortcomings.
We-words may even save your life. In one project, patients with heart failure were interviewed with their spouses. They were asked a series of questions, including “As you think back on how the two of you have coped with the heart condition, what do you think you have done best?” The more the spouses used we-words in their answers, the healthier the patients were six months later. The use of we-words by spouses indicated that they viewed their partner’s health problem as a shared problem that both were committed to fixing. When both members of the relationship were working together to cope with the illness, it reduced the physical and emotional stress on the patient.
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What personality traits do SWAT team members have?
They differed from the average person by being extremely confident ("self-deceptive enhancement"), more emotionally stable and more resilient:
The present study was aimed at investigating whether different personality profiles could be found among Italian police Special Force (SF) officers. Our hypothesis was that different personality profiles would be found, and that they would differ with respect to psychological and organizational functioning. This conjecture was tested on anonymously collected Big Five scores of all members of a 'Reparto Mobile' unit (n = 289) by means of a Two-Step cluster analysis. Two distinct personality profiles were found: two-thirds of participants showed a personality profile that was quite similar to the general population, with the exception of a higher self-reported emotional stability and self-deceptive enhancement, while the remaining third showed higher levels of any personality domain than both the other cluster and the general population. These officers also endorsed lower scores in measures of depression, anxiety, professional exhaustion, loss of empathy, and higher scores in a measure of organizational resilience, suggesting that they may represent the most suitable personnel for the delicate tasks their unit usually has to accomplish. In addition, self-deceptive enhancement emerged as a likely personality trait of police SF officers.
Source: "Personality Profiles of Special Force Police Officers" from Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology
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Can you use hostage negotiation techniques to improve your life at work and at home?
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How many people can't remember their home phone number?
According to a survey conducted in 2007 by a neuropsychologist at Trinity College Dublin, fully a third of Brits under the age of thirty can’t remember even their own home land line number without pulling it up on their handsets. The same survey found that 30 percent of adults can’t remember the birthdays of more than three immediate family members. Our gadgets have eliminated the need to remember such things anymore.
This is from Joshua Foer's wonderful book, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. Amazon ranked it one of the Best Books of 2011.
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Which of the seven deadly sins do men and women confess to the most?
Gad Saad, author of The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature, references a study done by a Catholic priest (and cited by the Vatican) on which of the seven deadly sins Catholics are most likely to confess to.
Lust comes in first for men, pride for women:
Men:
1. Lust
2. Gluttony
3. Sloth
4. Anger
5. Pride
6. Envy
7. Greed
Women:
1. Pride
2. Envy
3. Anger
4. Lust
5. Gluttony
6. Avarice (Greed)
7. Sloth
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Which college major is most likely to catapult you into the top 1% of earners?
Pre-med.
Zoology, surprisingly, is #4.
Via Harvard Business Review, citing the NYT:
The college majors that offer students the best chance of making it into the top 1% of earners are, in order, pre-med, economics, biochemistry, and zoology, according to census data cited by The New York Times. 11.8% of pre-meds crack the 1%, whereas the proportion of majors in economics, biochem, and zoology reaching that level are, respectively, 8.2%, 7.2%, and 6.9%.
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Do people really believe conspiracy theories or do they just not trust authority?
It seems to be more about not trusting authority. This fascinating study shows a high correlation between conspiracy theorists being inclined to hold contradictory beliefs.
For instance, people who believed Osama Bin Laden was already dead when the US raided his compound were also more likely to believe he was still alive now.
Apparently the logic is something like "It's not about whether my theory is right but what they are telling us is definitely wrong."
Conspiracy theories can form a monological belief system: A self-sustaining worldview comprised of a network of mutually supportive beliefs. The present research shows that even mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively correlated in endorsement. In Study 1 (n = 137), the more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered. In Study 2 (n = 102), the more participants believed that Osama Bin Laden was already dead when U.S. special forces raided his compound in Pakistan, the more they believed he is still alive. Hierarchical regression models showed that mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively associated because both are associated with the view that the authorities are engaged in a cover-up (Study 2). The monological nature of conspiracy belief appears to be driven not by conspiracy theories directly supporting one another but by broader beliefs supporting conspiracy theories in general.
Source: "Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories" from Social Psychological and Personality Science
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Why do people believe in conspiracy theories?
Are people who believe in conspiracy theories more Machiavellian?
How much should we trust others? What are the consequences of trusting too much or too little?
Do we lie more when we text? Which medium makes us the most honest?
People lie more often via text message. We're more honest via video than we are in the other mediums tested -- including in face to face.
Via Science Daily:
Sending a text message leads people to lie more often than in other forms of communication, according to new research by David Xu, assistant professor in the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University.
And I found this surprising:
The authors then analyzed which forms of communication led to more deception. They found that buyers who received information via text messages were 95 percent more likely to report deception than if they had interacted via video, 31 percent more likely to report deception when compared to face-to-face, and 18 percent more likely if the interaction was via audio chat.
The fact that people were less likely to lie via video than in person was surprising, Xu said, but makes sense given the so-called "spotlight" effect, where a person feels they're being watched more closely on video than face-to-face.
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Can you tell whether a company is in trouble by the words its employees use?
Workers who refer to their employer as "the company" or "that company" and co-workers as "they" are likely to be at companies with low morale and high turnover.
When employees refer to "our office" and "our company" they're probably somewhere with low turnover. They probably work harder and feel fulfilled by their career.
From James Pennebaker's book The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us:
Management consultants sometimes distinguish among I-companies, we-companies, and they-companies. To get a rough idea of an organization’s climate, they ask employees to talk about their typical workday. If employees refer to “my office” or “my company,” the atmosphere of the workplace is usually fine. People working in these I-companies are reasonably happy but not particularly wedded to the company itself. However, if they refer to “our office” or “our company,” pay special attention. Those in we-companies have embraced their workplace as part of their own identities. This sense of we-ness may explain why they work harder, have lower employee turnover, and have a greater sense of fulfillment about their work lives. And be very concerned if an organization’s employees start calling it “the company” or, worse, “that company” and referring to their co-workers as “they.” They-companies can be nightmares because workers are proclaiming that their work identity has nothing to do with them. No wonder consultants report that they-companies have unhappy workers and high turnover.
