Right-Ear Advantage

Marzoli & Tommasi (2009) had a female confederate visit a disco and approach 176 random people asking for a smoke. Clubbers were about twice as likely to hand one over if the request was directed at the right ear, whether or not the clubber was male or female.

These findings confirm previous studies which have found a right-ear preference for attending to and processing verbal stimuli. It is thought that this is because language is preferentially processed by the left side of the brain, which receives its input from the right ear.

Source

Light swearing can be useful

To see whether swearing can help change attitudes, Scherer and Sagarin (2006) divided 88 participants into three groups to watch one of three slightly different speeches.

The only difference between the speeches was that one contained a mild swear word at the start:

“…lowering of tuition is not only a great idea, but damn it, also the most reasonable one for all parties involved.”

The second speech contained the ‘damn it’ at the end and the third had neither.

When participants’ attitudes were measured, they were most influenced by the speeches with the mild obscenity included, either at the beginning or the end. It also emerged that the word ‘damn’ increased the audience’s perception of the speaker’s intensity, which was what lead to the increased levels of persuasion. On the other hand, swearing did not affect how the audience perceived the speaker’s credibility.

Source

But with the approach of modern times, when the stupid craze for signature came in, the Unknown Man ceased his activity, and was content to rest. An immense throng of vain fellows, of men who had a name or sought to make a name, began to paint, invent, carve, write. They had less genius than the Unknown Man, and they had also less modesty: they proclaimed to all the winds that they, and none but they, had done these things. They worked not only for their own joy or for others’ benefit, but that the world might know that they, and none but they, had done the work.

— Giovanni Papini - The Unknown Man [24 Cervelli]

For better and worse, telling stories is how we make sense of the world, and it’s hard to tell a story without focal actors around which to center the action. But as we witness a succession of popular movements, from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, we can at least pause to appreciate the real story, which is the remarkable phenomenon of a great many ordinary individuals coming together to change the world.

— Duncan Watts

Bad is stronger than good

Researchers examined the impact of team members who were deadbeats (“withholders of effort”), downers (who “express pessimism, anxiety, insecurity and irritation”) and jerks (who violate “interpersonal norms of respect”). They found that having just one slacker or jerk in a group can bring down performance by 30% to 40%.

Source: How a Few Bad Apples Ruin Everything

Self-promotion will be a skill that produces disproportionate rewards

I’m not concerned that women don’t engage in enough building of self-confidence or self-esteem. I’m worried about something much simpler: not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks.

Source: A rant about women

Ugly fonts

In a Princeton study, 18-40 year old test subjects were allowed to read short descriptions of aliens either in a “disfluent font” like Comic Sans or Bodoni or a “fluent font” like Arial. After a 15 minute delay, participants were able to recall 14% more information if it was presented in the disfluent font.

Source

Skills & the internet

The Internet, like all intellectual technologies has a trade off. As we train our brains to use it, as we adapt to the environment of the internet, which is an environment of kind of constant immersion and information and constant distractions, interruptions, juggling lots of messages, lots of bits of information. As we adapt to that information environment, so to speak, we gain certain skills, but we lose other ones. And if you look at the scientific evidence, it’s pretty clear particularly from studies of like video games, that use of online media enhances our – some of our visual cognitive ability. So our ability to spot patterns in arrays of visual information to keep track of lots of things going on at once on a screen but along with that, what we lose is the ability to pay deep attention to one thing for a sustained period of time, to filter out distractions. - Nicholas Carr

Source.

Why is it so uncomfortable to stand really close to a stranger? →

How Friends Ruin Memory: The Social Conformity Effect →

We bullshit for each other. We tweak our stories so that they become better stories. We bend the facts so that the facts appeal to the group. Because we are social animals, our memory of the past is constantly being revised to fit social pressures.

With so many opportunities and so many constraints, successfully picking what to do next is your moment of highest leverage. It deserves more time and attention than most people give it.

— Seth Godin

As content becomes free and media becomes free, the only truly priceless commodity is attention.

— Intel @ DDBSummit

Envy may hurt, but is good for you

“By hurting, the emotion of envy forces us to focus our thoughts on the source of our agitation. That’s a reasonable interpretation from the data, but the fact is that envy does change our cognitive function - it boosts mental persistence and memory.”

Source.

The Yogurt Made Me Do It →

Nietzsche was right: “There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom.”

People still like [TV] because it lets them just sit back, relax and veg out. The marketing, business and even normal press is full of articles about ‘engagement’ and about the need to cede control to ‘active’ consumers, who want to create, control and dictate in their turn. I am not so much of a Luddite as to deny these things are happening. Consumers have always had opinions and ideas, and the internet lets them express these as never before. But, people do not always want to be in ‘active’ mode. Sometimes, people want to be in passive, lean-back mode. By the time you’ve spent a day organising and feeding your kids, working in an office, tidying up the house and booking the car in for its next service, a few hours on the sofa with your feet up and your mind in neutral is just the ticket. Roll on TV.

— Olivia Johnson