There’s a great part in Bill Cosby: Himself when he tells a story about cooking breakfast for his kids at 6 a.m. Instead of serving standard breakfast fare, he gives his children chocolate cake. It’s a funny story, because of the absurdity of serving cake for breakfast. However, Cosby may have been on to something.
Researchers at Tel Aviv University have discovered that dessert can help dieters lose more weight–and keep it off in the long run–if they make it a part of their breakfasts.
You should focus on indulging in the morning. That’s when your body’s metabolism is its most active, and when you’re better able to work off the extra calories throughout the day, the researchers say.
Attempting to avoid sweets entirely can create a psychological addiction to these same foods in the long-term, explains Professor Daniela Jakubowicz. Adding dessert items to breakfast can control cravings throughout the rest of the day. Over the course of a 32 week-long study, detailed in the journal Steroids, participants who added dessert to their breakfast–cookies, cake, or chocolate–lost an average of 40 pounds more than a group that avoided such foods. What’s more, they kept off the pounds longer.
It seems pretty common sense that eating more calories in the morning would help curb cravings later in the day.
Highly restrictive diets that forbid desserts and carbohydrates are initially effective, but often cause dieters to stray from their food plans as a result of withdrawal-like symptoms. They wind up regaining much of the weight they lost during the diet proper.
The study’s participants consumed the same daily amount of calories, but “the participants in the low carbohydrate diet group had less satisfaction, and felt that they were not full.”
Their sugar and carb cravings were more intense and they chose to cheat on their diets plans.
“But the group that consumed a bigger breakfast, including dessert, experienced few if any cravings for these foods later in the day,” Jakubowicz said.
It looks like I’ll be eating fewer eggs and more cake for breakfast now. Come to think of it, bacon cake sounds delicious.
Bonus: The cake story in Bill Cosby: Himself
(Photo via Flickr: Slice of Chic / Creative Commons)
I know this is my second post in a row about marriage. This one, though, is ammunition for those who favor cohabitation more than getting married.
According a new study in the Journal of Marriage and Family, married coupled are no better off than unmarried couples who live together. In fact, cohabitation is better for a couple in the long run.
“Marriage has long been an important social institution, but in recent decades western societies have experienced increases in cohabitation, before or instead of marriage, and increases in children born outside of marriage,” said Dr Kelly Musick, associate professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology. “These changes have blurred the boundaries of marriage, leading to questions about what difference marriage makes in comparison to alternatives.”
Musick’s study focused on issues of happiness, depression, health, and social ties. The findings show that feelings of well-being and happiness were high after a honeymoon period for married and cohabitation couples alike. But that good feeling does last long.
“We found that differences between marriage and cohabitation tend to be small and dissipate after a honeymoon period. Also while married couples experienced health gains – likely linked to the formal benefits of marriage such as shared healthcare plans – cohabiting couples experienced greater gains in happiness and self-esteem. For some, cohabitation may come with fewer unwanted obligations than marriage and allow for more flexibility, autonomy, and personal growth” Musick said. “Compared to most industrial countries, America continues to value marriage above other family forms. However, our research shows that marriage is by no means unique in promoting well-being and that other forms of romantic relationships can provide many of the same benefits.”
I’ve always heard that marriage really doesn’t change anything if you’re already living together. Now we have a study proving that saying. However, this raises the question: Why then get married? Are you doing it for tax purposes? Child raising purposes? Or do you feel more committed because you’re married?
The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are two shows I never miss. I think my obsessiveness of watching them is due to that completist personality I mentioned. Or maybe it’s because I’m a deep thinker.
Hey, I didn’t say it first–a University of Delaware assistant professor in communications did. Dannagal Young surveyed 398 undergraduate students about their views of 13 different TV genres. And she discovered “meaningful differences” in how people watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, finding that some viewers watch the show more for context than information or fun.
Such viewers exhibit high “need for cognition,” a psychological term used to describe people who engage in and enjoy arguments, ideas and the analysis of problems and their solutions.
“It’s not about capacity to think,” Young explains. “It’s about their enjoyment of thinking.”
Young feels that “such viewers are not just watching the show for different reasons; they’re likely experiencing different impacts as a result,” Artika Rangan Casini reported for UDaily.
“We know that the reasons people seek out information strongly affect the implications of those messages,” she says. “In this case, people coming to the show looking for satirical analysis of political information may exhibit more long-lasting shifts in attitude.”
All this talk about thinking reminds me of a Brecht quote: “Thinking is one of the chief pleasures of the human race.” And for me, so is watching Jon and Stephen deliver news in humorous ways.
There was much talk about innovation and creativity in 2011. In fact, I heard or saw the word innovation so much that its mention would bring on waves of hostility in me. Everyone talked about it, making it not, well, very innovative.
Most writers were telling you what to do to be innovative or creative. Rarely did you read why it happens. It’s as most people wanted to jump to instruction without knowing reason.
That’s where Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer comes in. As with his previous book, How We Decide, Lehrer explores the basis of a brain function that everyone wants to know about. Yes, he does offer creativity advice, but he bases it in reason. You have to know the hows and whys before you can know the whats.
Lehrer leads readers through many examples of innovation and creativity, touching on everything from how Bob Dylan found his writing muse to how no-wrong-answers brainstorming doesn’t work in the long run to the benefits of living in a city. And he keeps your interest, because he’s a great storyteller who asserts authority. He doesn’t just report research; he guides with pristine narrative.
“The Power of Q” chapter is one of the more interesting sections. It’s about socialist Brian Uzzi and his study of Broadway musicals, about why some are successful and some are not. Uzzi found that successful productions needed a certain amount of people who have known each other for a long time and a certain amount who are new to the operation. In other words, a sweet spot of social intimacy is needed.
The reason I found this chapter interesting is because around the same time I was reading it, the Dallas Mavericks were restructuring their championship team, losing several players that helped them win it all last season. I’ve always been one that feels you don’t break up the house, you keep teams together for the long-term in order to ensure yearly success. After reading this chapter, though, I’m thinking differently about teams (sports or work). Perhaps it is best that the Mavericks shook things up, bringing in some new faces to play with a few of the old-timers. (However, maybe it’s not working; the Mavericks are 1-4 at the time of this review.)
What Lehrer suggests–and something he consistently suggests in his writings–is that you should know yourself best. Find what works for you, because for every piece of research saying one thing, there will be another saying the opposite. Maybe you work better getting away from a problem. Or maybe you work better with a group. However you work best, identify that and edge toward it. That is where you’ll find your creativity. For you see, science is primarily about paying attention, and until you pay attention to yourself first, nothing will change. Lehrer’s latest book is a great tool toward this needed self-consciousness in society.
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer in March 2012.)
A former band mate of mine once told me he would be happy to have a one-hit wonder. I thought he was crazy. I wanted a long life full of hits (and fame and groupies and all that comes with the rock-n-roll lifestyle). One-hit wonders seemed so fleeting and defining.
Besides, a musician doesn’t set out to write one hit song and then retire for life. If that happened, hit songs would be easy to craft and more people would do it.
But stop the record. A new study has found what it takes for a song to be a hit. University of Bristol researchers claim that predictions can be made using machine learning algorithms.
The team looked at the official U.K. top 40 singles chart over the past 50 years. Their aim was to distinguish the most popular (peak position top five) songs from less popular singles (peak position 30 to 40).
The researchers used musical features such as, tempo, time signature, song duration and loudness. They also computed more detailed summaries of the songs such as harmonic simplicity, how simple the chord sequence is, and non-harmonicity, how ‘noisy’ the song is.
A ‘hit potential equation’ that scores a song according to its audio features was devised. The equation works by looking at all the U.K. hits for a certain time and measuring their audio features. From this the researchers had a list of weights, telling then how important each of the 23 features was and allowing them to compute a score for a song.
The researchers classified songs as hits or not-hits based on their scores. The team had a 60 percent accuracy rate and noticed some interesting trends.
Before the 1980s, the danceability of a song was not very relevant to its hit potential. From then on, danceable songs were more likely to become a hit. Also the average danceability of all songs on the charts suddenly increased in the late 1970s.
In the 1980s, slower musical styles (tempo 70-89 beats per minute), such as ballads, were more likely to become a hit.
The prediction accuracy of the researchers’ hit potential equation varies over time. It was particularly difficult to predict hits around 1980. The equation performed best in the first half of the 1990s and from the year 2000. This suggests that the late 1970s and early 1980s were particularly creative and innovative periods of pop music.
Up until the early 1990s , hits were typically harmonically simpler than other songs of the era. On the other hand, from the 1990s onward hits more commonly have simpler, binary, rhythms such as 4/4 time.
On average, all songs on the chart are becoming louder. Additionally, the hits are relatively louder than the songs that dangle at the bottom of the charts, reflected by a strong weight for the loudness feature.
You can read more about the research at ScoreaAHit.
My favorite trend is the part about the late 1970s and early 1980s as periods of more creative and innovative music. I definitely agree with that.
Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have a hit song to write. The secret formula has been found.
(Photo via Flickr: Paul Townsend / Creative Commons)
Think of the most creative person you know. Now tell me, do you think that person cheats more than others? I bet you’ll say no, because most people place creativity and those who possess gobs of it on an elevated plain. If you’re less creative, then of course you’re a cheater, as the theory goes.
Oh how wrong that is, because, it’s actually those who are more creative that cheat more.
“Greater creativity helps individuals solve difficult tasks across many domains, but creative sparks may lead individuals to take unethical routes when searching for solutions to problems and tasks,” said lead researcher Francesca Gino, Ph.D., of Harvard University.
In other words, creativity breeds more rationality for choices.
Gino and her co-author, Dan Ariely, Ph.D., of Duke University, conducted five experiments to test their thesis that more creative people cheat under circumstances where they could justify their behavior.
We test our main hypotheses in a series of studies. First, as a pilot study, we collect field data to examine whether people in jobs that require high levels of creativity are more morally flexible than others. Next, we conduct five laboratory studies in which participants have the opportunity to behave dishonestly by overstating their performance and, as a result, earn more money. In Experiment 1, we measure creativity as an individual difference and examine whether this personality trait is associated with increased dishonest behavior. In Experiment 2, we prime cognitions associated with creativity and examine whether they temporarily promote dishonesty. In Experiments 3 and 4, we explore the mechanism explaining the link between creativity and dishonesty by focusing on people’s ability to justify unethical behavior. Finally, in Experiment 5, we examine whether individual differences in creativity moderate the effect of priming a creative mindset on dishonesty.
The researchers found during every study that the greater one’s creativity the more likely that person would cheat.
“Dishonesty and innovation are two of the topics most widely written about in the popular press,” the authors wrote. “Yet, to date, the relationship between creativity and dishonest behavior has not been studied empirically. … The results from the current article indicate that, in fact, people who are creative or work in environments that promote creative thinking may be the most at risk when they face ethical dilemmas.”
Gino and Ariely say there are some limitations in their study–primarily that they created monetary temptation situations. They say “that future research should investigate whether creativity would lead people to satisfy selfish, short-term goals rather than their higher aspirations when faced with self-control dilemmas, such as eating a slice of cake when trying to lose weight.”
I’m not sure about you, but I can always find a way to rationalize eating cake, creativity be damned.
If you’re anything like me, you bounce around various news and magazine sites daily on the Internet. It’s rare that I consume one site totally. I more often graze on information like a starving student at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
This is common for a majority of Internet users. According to new research from the University of Missouri, “Internet users often do not make the conscious decision to read news online, but they come across news when they are searching for other information or doing non-news related activities online, such as shopping or visiting social networking sites.”
“Incidental exposure to online news is becoming a major way for many people to receive information about news events,” said Borchuluun Yadamsuren, a post-doctoral fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute in the University of Missouri School of Journalism. “However, many people don’t realize how their news reading behavior is shifting to more serendipitous discovery.”
Yadamsuren surveyed almost 150 people and found that they experience online news in three different ways. The first way is specifically on news sites. The second way they’re exposed to news is via non-news sites and activities, such as social networking sites and checking email. The third way is by just happening upon news while conducting other Web searches.
Because of the many ways people come into contact with news, Yadamsuren believes organizations should have links to their stories on various Internet sites as much as possible.
Fair enough. But just having links doesn’t necessarily mean people are going to read it. For a perspective on that, we turn to an interesting piece called “The Top 5 Things That Bother Me About This Headline.”
In it, writer Alissa Walker questions how the Internet is changing the way she writes.
“…when I saw how a slight tweak to my text would make my page views skyrocket, I became a convert. Now, instead of organizing my thoughts into pithy paragraphs for readers, I engineer my words so they’re algorithmically attractive. I rewrite my headlines to make them more enticing to Google. I tag them with dozens of relevant phrases to boost my authority on specific topics. I add search terms to my text to further optimize my SEO ranking. I admit that I don’t totally understand what that last sentence even means.”
Meaning is what we writers and readers are constantly trying to find. What can I write that means something to someone? How do I find stories that mean something to me? There are no easy answers, because they rely on personal choices. You’re never going to write something meaningful if you’re creating quick-list articles. And you’re never going to read anything meaningful online if you’re always making the excuse that you don’t have time to read.
Where, then, is that middle ground? How do you find meaningful stories for yourself? What attracts you to online stories and news?
Have a big scar on your face? Maybe a huge mole? You might want to figure a way to cover up that mark if you’re seeking a job. A new study shows that marks (stigmas) on faces are huge distractions to interviewers, causing them to remember the stigma more than content.
“When evaluating applicants in an interview setting, it’s important to remember what they are saying,” Rice University Professor of Psychology Mikki Hebl said. “Our research shows if you recall less information about competent candidates because you are distracted by characteristics on their face, it decreases your overall evaluations of them.”
The research conclusions came from two studies. The first involved 171 undergraduate students watching a computer-mediated interview while tracking their eye activity. They had to recall candidate information after the interview.
“When looking at another person during a conversation, your attention is naturally directed in a triangular pattern around the eyes and mouth,” said Juan Madera, a University of Houston professor and co-author of the study. “We tracked the amount of attention outside of this region and found that the more the interviewers attended to stigmatized features on the face, the less they remembered about the candidate’s interview content, and the less memory they had about the content led to decreases in ratings of the applicant.”
Face-to-face interviews were held during the second study. Thirty-eight full-time managers enrolled in a part-time MBA and/or a Master of Science in a hospitality management program, all of whom had experience in interviewing applicants for current or past staff positions, interviewed candidates who had a facial birthmark.
Even with their workplace experience and education, the interviewers had a tough time managing their reactions to the stigma, Madera says. The stigma’s effects were actually stronger with this group, which he attributed to the face-to-face interview setting.
“It just shows that despite maturity and experience levels, it is still a natural human reaction to react negatively to facial stigma,” Madera said.
“The bottom line is that how your face looks can significantly influence the success of an interview,” Hebl said. “There have been many studies showing that specific groups of people are discriminated against in the workplace, but this study takes it a step further, showing why it happens. The allocation of attention away from memory for the interview content explains this.”
Well, now, even more proof that looks do matter. What, then, is a good solution?
(Photo via Flickr: Bart Everson / Creative Commons)
One of the most ridiculous parts of the job hiring process is letting a company conduct a credit check to determine if you are financially responsible. Yes, I can see how this might be a good process for a job at a bank, for example. But just because you have a good or bad credit score shouldn’t qualify or disqualify you for most jobs.
Now, there’s some research to back up my belief. In fact, people who have good credit scores are more likely rude.
In a study to be published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, researchers from Louisiana State University, Texas Tech University and Northern Illinois University focused on links between credit ratings and personalities.
“With regards to personality and credit–it makes sense that conscientiousness is related to good credit, but what was really interesting was that agreeableness was negatively related to your credit score,” said Jeremy Bernerth, assistant professor in LSU’s E. J. Ourso College of Business Rucks Department of Management. “That suggests easy-going individuals actually have worse credit scores than disagreeable and rude individuals. This suggests that agreeable individuals might get themselves in trouble by co-signing loans for friends or family or taking out additional credit cards at the suggestion of store clerks.”
The researchers also found that there’s no correlation between poor scores and bad behavior on the job.
“It was telling that poor credit scores were not correlated to theft and other deviant types of work behaviors,” said Bernerth. “Most companies attempt to justify the use of credit scores because they think such employees will end up stealing, but our research suggests that might not be the case.”
I shared this study with an HR professional. She suggested that those who score poorly could also be more naive, which is something you don’t want in the workplace.
Interesting. Would you rather have a nice and naive or disagreeable and rude employee working for or with you?
There’s some good news from the 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report. In it, 40 percent of college students or young professionals say they would take lower paying jobs if companies offered more flexible social media policies.
This shows, to me, that people are getting away from the idea that money buys happiness. We’re becoming a society that values time more than how fat a wallet can get.
Findings include:
Half of those surveyed would rather lose their wallet or purse than their smart phone or mobile device.
More than two of five would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access, and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility.
At least one in four said the absence of remote access would influence their job decisions, such as leaving companies sooner rather than later, slacking off, or declining job offers outright.
Three out of 10 feel that once they begin working, it will be their right–more than a privilege–to be able to work remotely with a flexible schedule.
For years, I’ve gone on record several times where I work that I’d take a pay cut if management would allow me more freedom in my workday. It’s a losing argument, though, because it means managers have to give up some control. They would have to focus mainly on results.
The result of a controlling mindset, though, could be a disengaged, unproductive workforce. That is, if people actually want to work for a company like that anymore. And it’s beginning to a lot look like people don’t.
How important is social media access and workplace flexibility to you? Or are you just happy to have a job (if you have one)?
There’s a great part in Bill Cosby: Himself when he tells a story about cooking breakfast for his kids at 6 a.m. Instead of serving standard breakfast fare, he gives his children chocolate cake. It’s a funny story, because of the absurdity of serving cake for breakfast. However, Cosby may have been on to something.
