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Tag Archives: Psychology
The True Rewards of Giving
Would most people rather save one person or save the world? The answer might surprise you.
University of Oregon psychologist Paul Slovic asked subjects for donations to save a little girl from starvation. To one group he gave no other information; to the other group he added that this girl was one of millions of other starving people. Logically, that extra bit of information should make no difference, since the girl being saved is the same.
But as one of my mentors likes to say, human beings are psychological and not logical creatures. Case in point: subjects in the second group donated about half as much money as those in the first group.
How to Stop a Fight
This has happened to you.
You’re standing in a crowded room. Someone pushes into you from behind. You feel a surge of irritation, even anger. Who is this careless oaf who can’t respect your personal space? You turn around to express your indignation, only to discover that the offending party is actually a good friend of yours who has bumped into you accidentally or, perhaps, even on purpose and is not smiling at you as you find yourself on the receiving end of a good-natured prank.
Your anger evaporates in an instant.
But why? The bump was no less of a bump on account of the person who bumped you. But the bump was never the issue at all. What was at issue was your ego, resenting the perpetrator who failed to show you respect.
It’s almost always ego that is the real perpetrator in any fight. Change one little detail and our irritation or anger vanishes. But when we feel our ego has been affronted, heaven help the offending party.
Conquer Laziness Now
Readers of a certain age may remember an old Goodyear tire commercial with the tag line, “You can pay me now, or pay me later.” The applications transcend auto repair, as Shaomin Li, professor of international business at Virginia’s Old Dominion University discovered on a business trip to Taiwan.
As he was being chauffeured from one venue to the next, Professor Li noticed that his host always backed into parking lot spaces, opting for often tricky and laborious maneuvering over the simpler method of pulling straight forward. Detecting a wider pattern of behavior, Professor Li conducted his own experiment. He discovered that 88% of Chinese drivers back in when they park, in contrast to 6% of American drivers.
“All of a sudden,” recounts Professor Li, “I said, gee — isn’t this delayed gratification?”
The Drifters: A Generation Lost in Space
You know who they are. You’ve seen them. They’re everywhere. On the roads. In the malls. In office buildings and grocery stores and parking lots.
There’s no way to avoid them. And there are more of them every day.
You know who I mean: the drifters.
They’re the ones driving just under the speed limit – 28 MPH in a 30 zone, not quite slow enough to pass and maddeningly unaware. They’re the ones walking through the aisles, down the halls, up the stairs, and across the floor, like Energizer Bunnies with batteries that have finally run down, refusing to stop but plodding along, sporadic, lethargic.
And it’s not just their lack of speed, not merely their dawdling. That we could live with, anticipate, and circumvent. It’s something much more than that – or much less.
They drift.
Start Making Better Choices
Why are fish so smart? Because they go around in schools.
Turns out, it’s no joke. Just ask Christian Agrillo, a comparative psychologist at Italy’s University of Padova. In his research, Dr. Agrillo tests something called numerical competence. By placing three black dots in front of a desirable object (like food, or a door that leads to other fish) and two dots in front of an undesirable object (like no food, or a door that leads nowhere), Dr. Agrillo has been able to determine that fish have the ability to differentiate between different numbers.
Along the way, however, the researchers discovered something else. Put fish together and they make better decisions than they make when they’re alone.
Yonason Goldson 