The Weekend Hangover
Morning all, I’m right there with you today. After a great Friday night, we’re going to get through Saturday morning together. Grab some water, B12, and something easy on your stomach before settling in to get through your Weekend Hangover.
A study came out recently describing The Cheater’s High. Ever wonder why some people cheat even at the simplest of games? People who believe they get away with cheating experience a thrill of self-satisfaction analogous to that of winning a game. Cheating and getting away with it feels good, so people continue to do it.
Hey, my eyes are up here! While the stereotype of men is that their gaze wonders, people tend to focus on a woman’s face more than their body, especially when prompted to evaluate the personality of someone in a picture. However, when asked to evaluate the appearance of someone, both men and women focus on the body of the individual. When asked to evaluate someone’s personality from a picture, men tend to give pretty women higher scores. We call that one “Halo Error.” Women are not so kind to pretty women. The takeaway from this research is that when evaluating appearances, men and women are equally objectifying with their gazes.
Only .77% (not a typo) of leaders are perceived as being both goal and socially focused.
What 100 years of research shows about effective leadership: The phrase “it depends” can be translated into “nothing specific”, which can be translated into, “not much.”
Give feedback like a sports coach: I’ve had some good coaches that were brutally honest with their feedback, which I appreciated. Others I had to interpret consequences for feedback. This post says managers should use more encouragement because of how effective it is. I can only think of one coach from my high school and college athletic career combined that offered encouragement. Maybe I’m just lucky.
“Atlas Shrugged” is full of terrible business advice: I personally loved the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, but I don’t interpret its writing verbatim. Many of the principles described in the book including hard work, earning what one gets, and using rational objectivity in business are worthwhile premises. However, if one interprets the book too literally and carries these principles beyond their logical extreme, then like any principle, the advice becomes lousy. I liked the book in large part because of Rand’s ability to turn a phrase. Some of my favorite quotes from the book include,
- “If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”
- “I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach.”
- “There is no such thing as a lousy job - only lousy men who don't care to do it.”
- “Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.”
- “Danger is merely an opportunity for a brilliant performance.”
- “When I die I hope to go to heaven--whatever the hell that is--and I want to be able to afford the price of admission.”
The Red Sox won the World Series this week much to my satisfaction, but the Cardinals proved yet again they are a strong, classy, and well run team. This is a great post on how the St. Louis Cardinals keep building World Series caliber teams.
Wikipedia has a management problem, and it may be impossible to solve. The decline of Wikipedia.
The devil is in your snooze button and hell comes in 9 minute intervals.
One of the most important aspects of having a job you love is working in a caring environment.
Sometimes I post articles featuring concepts I think completely miss the point, and this is one of them. One startup believes texting is the future of hiring, because 48% of phones are still flip, one in five adults don’t use the internet, and 59% of the American workforce is hourly. Texting may have merit for recruiters and talent acquisition specialists now, but if you look at the trends, these statistics will NOT be nearly this high in a few years. If I were founding a startup, I would look to enter a market that wasn’t rapidly diminishing. But that’s just me.
This is a neat study. I’m not sure the practical implications, but it was interesting to read nonetheless. Individuals have an optimal walking speed–a speed that minimizes energy expenditure for a given distance, so males being bigger on average tend to walk faster than females. The study showed that males walk at a significantly slower pace to match the females’ paces when the female is his romantic partner. Ladies, want to tell if a guy is in love with you? If so, see if he slows down to match your pace when you’re walking together. If he does, he loves you. If not… there’s always match.com.
The average age of a World Series viewer this year was 54.4 years old and that number is trending higher. Why kids aren’t watching baseball.
Do clutch players or a hot hand exist in sports?
Picture Andrew Luck during his senior year at Stanford sauntering up to a freshmen girl he’s never met before in the middle of the crowded campus quad and asking if he could kiss her. Apparently, that is a thing at Stanford University and how upper classmen welcome freshmen to campus. Nerds are weird. This “kissing orgy” leads to the “kissing disease.”
The biggest whiskey drinkers in the world are not who you’d think.
Another cool study on the power of a name: When people were playing The Prisoner’s Dilemma (detailed in this post from a few weeks ago) they were more likely to cooperate when it was labeled “The Community Game” than when it was labeled “The Wall Street Game.” I wonder if that is any reflection on people’s perception of Wall Street…
For the I/O Psych and HR Crowd: Heads up, religious discrimination cases are on the rise.
Do bigger prizes lead to bigger effort? The short answer is yes, but the research is fascinating.
Does the “Best” Team Always Win the World Series? The answer may have been no last year when Detroit won, but being a biased Red Sox fan, the answer is undoubtedly yes this year. (Note: Read the article and ignore my commentary.)