neuromarketing

April 9, 2014December 23, 2016

Your Belief That the World Is “Just” Can Make You Cruel

eople’s wish to see the world as just and orderly sometimes leads them to harm those who have already suffered injustice, according to Daniel P. Skarlicki and R. Anthony Turner of the University of British Columbia. In an experiment, managers with self-reported hiring experience provided lower ratings for fictitious job applicants whose only difference was that they had been mistreated by their former employers, such as by being laid off without notice. People derogate victims in this way to avoid the cognitive dissonance that comes from trying to understand how individuals can suffer injustice in a just world, the researchers say.

SOURCE: Unfairness begets unfairness: Victim derogation bias in employee ratings

April 4, 2014December 23, 2016

Do You Need to Hear a Musical Group to Judge Its Quality?

Research participants who watched silent videos of chamber-music ensembles were 26% more accurate at guessing which ones had been winners of past musical contests (such as the Saint Paul String Quartet Competition) than people who had watched both audio and video of the groups, says Chia-Jung Tsay of University College London. Participants who listened to audio without video were the worst at guessing the competition winners. In evaluating the groups without sound, the viewers were apparently responding to what they perceived as strong leadership and indications of group unity, such as the players’ proximity and similarity of appearance—probably the same factors that had influenced the judges of the competitions, Tsay says.

SOURCE: The vision heuristic: Judging music ensembles by sight alone

March 21, 2014December 23, 2016

When Women Take Over Family Firms, Profitability Increases

A study of thousands of family-owned firms in Italy reveals that, on average, replacing a male CEO with a woman improves a company’s profitability, an effect that becomes more pronounced as the proportion of women on the board of directors increases, says a team led by Mario Daniele Amore of Bocconi University in Milan. Overall, the more women on the board of a female-led firm, the more profitable it is likely to be. The presence of women directors may make female CEOs feel more comfortable, improving cooperation and facilitating information exchange, the researchers say.

SOURCE: Gender Interactions Within the Family Firm

March 11, 2014December 23, 2016

High-Status People Perform Poorly After Being Humbled

When high-status people suffer a humbling loss, their performance tends to decline dramatically, because they’ve become dependent on their rank to maintain a positive view of themselves, say Jennifer Carson Marr of Georgia Institute of Technology and Stefan Thau of London Business School. For example, a study of Major League baseball players shows that in the 58% of salary arbitrations where players lost, the higher a player’s status, the greater the fall-off in performance the following year. If you’re a high-status person, sometimes the best way to cope with a work-related humiliation is to get a job with a new employer where you feel respected, say the researchers, whose study appears in the Academy of Management Journal.

SOURCE: High status is a liability when careers sputter, study finds

March 6, 2014

Can a President’s Happy Talk Hurt the Economy?

It’s known that fantasizing about an ideal future makes individuals decrease their effort, but can the same effect be seen on the scale of a national population? After studying U.S. presidential inaugural addresses, a team led by A. Timur Sevincer of the University of Hamburg in Germany concluded that the answer is yes: Positive thinking about the future, as expressed in these speeches, predicted declines in GDP over the subsequent presidential term. Happy talk may prevent people from preparing for difficulties, the researchers say.

SOURCE: Positive Thinking About the Future in Newspaper Reports and Presidential Addresses Predicts Economic Downturn

March 5, 2014

It Matters Which Avatar You Choose When Gaming

Research participants who had played a 5-minute computer game using a Superman avatar were subsequently kinder to other people, and those who had played as the evil Voldemort were less kind, say Gunwoo Yoon and Patrick T. Vargas of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After the computer game, the participants were instructed to provide an unspecified amount of chocolate and hot chili sauce to other people who they believed would be required to eat it all (untrue); those who had been “Superman” provided about twice as much chocolate as chili sauce, while those who had been “Voldemort” did the reverse.

SOURCE: Know Thy Avatar: The Unintended Effect of Virtual-Self Representation on Behavior

March 1, 2014December 23, 2016

A Messy Environment Makes It Harder for You to Focus on a Task

In an experiment, people who sat by a messy desk that was scattered with papers felt more frustrated and weary and took nearly 10% longer to answer questions in a color-and-word-matching task, in comparison with those who were seated by a neatly arranged desk, say doctoral candidate Boyoun (Grace) Chae of the University of British Columbia and Rui (Juliet) Zhu of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in China. A disorganized environment appears to threaten people’s sense of personal control, and the threat depletes their ability to regulate themselves, the researchers say.

SOURCE: Environmental Disorder Leads to Self-Regulatory Failure

February 24, 2014

Why You Spend More Hours at Work When Your Relationship Is Going Well

Do people in bad relationships escape to the relative sanctity of the office and devote more time to work, as has been hypothesized? Just the opposite, says a team led by Dana Unger of the University of Mannheim in Germany. People put more time in at work when their intimate relationships are going well, cutting back in order to invest in their relationships when things aren’t smooth at home, the researchers found in a diary study of 154 dual-earner couples. A healthy relationship at home gives people emotional, cognitive, and physical vigor, which allows them to put in more hours at work.

SOURCE: A question of time: Daily time allocation between work and private life

February 23, 2014

Customers Are Willing to Pay More When They’re Warm

Shoppers on a popular web portal were about 46% more likely to go to a “To Purchase” page when the daily temperature averaged 25 degrees Celsius (77 Fahrenheit) than when it averaged 20 degrees (68F), say Yonat Zwebner of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Leonard Lee of Columbia, and Jacob Goldenberg of the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel. The researchers also found that people in a warm room were willing to pay more than those in a cool room for 9 of 11 consumer items shown to them, and other participants were willing to pay 36% more for items when holding warm, versus cool, therapeutic pads. Exposure to physical warmth activates the concept of emotional warmth, eliciting positive reactions and increasing product valuation, the researchers say.

SOURCE: The Temperature Premium: Warm Temperatures Increase Product Valuation