File this one under “even I didn’t fully expect that.” I’m a strong believer in the power of the subconscious mind, and that people make decisions before they ever consciously consider the reasons for them.
At Yale, they had a number of students bump into the lab assistant who was holding a lot of books. The assistant asked them to hold a cup of coffee and The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java.
That’s pretty serious - just a small thing like that their characterization of the person changed.
Read: The Subconcious Brain - Who’s Minding the Mind? - New York Times
A recent study in the UK shows that people in skilled jobs said they were happier than people in other jobs.
Professionals including doctors, solicitors, nurses, teachers and police officers were most satisfied with their lives, scoring 7.6 out of 10 on average.
Read: Health, wealth and a skilled job is the way to happiness - Independent Online Edition > Health
UK residents as a whole scored 7.3
Most people don’t appreciate an angry look, but a new University of Michigan psychology study found that some people find angry expressions so rewarding that they will readily learn ways to encourage them.
I used to think that “people crave attention in any way they can get it, and if they can’t get it in a positive way, then they go for the destructive way.” Which, I guess is a very cliche`d movie plot - guy get spurned by beautiful girl, guy turns into psycho.
This study suggests that some people may simply crave other people’s negative emotions, but I guess it could be a “self fulfilling prophecy” type thing where the high testosterone people are more prone to piss people off, which makes them crave that emotion more etc…
Read: High-testosterone people reinforced by others’ anger, new study finds
Quite a bit, actually. Psychologists gathered students to take various personality tests, and then had a separate group of people rate their Facebook personalities against the same dimensions and found that there was a strong correlation between the two.
I wonder what my facebook profile says about me?
Read: Student Facebook Profiles Are a Match - US News and World Report