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IT’S A FUNNY OLD WORLD

by | Aug 30, 2018 | Articles, It's a funny old world | 0 comments

In this column, we provoke fresh thinking and round up some of the weird, wonderful, quirky, surprising – and shocking – stories out there

Sexual healing

It’s time to stop ignoring sex in the context of wellbeing, say psychologists at George Mason University, who’ve discovered that engaging in sexual activity one day increases wellbeing the following day.

Todd Kashdan and colleagues say sex is rarely included in theoretical models of wellbeing nor discussed in articles on the topic. The researchers set out to address this omission with a three-week diary study, examining associations between frequency and quality of sex, and positive mood and sense of meaning.

They found that sexual activity on one day was related to greater wellbeing the next, and that higher reported sexual pleasure and intimacy predicted greater positive affect and lower negative affect the following day.

The paper, ‘Sexuality leads to boosts in mood and meaning in life with no evidence for the reverse direction: A daily diary investigation’, was published in Emotion.

 

Don’t stop the feeling

Many people underestimate the potential positive impact of expressing gratitude, according to research from University of Texas at Austin and Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago involving hundreds of participants.

In a series of experiments, participants were asked to write a letter of thanks via email to someone who had touched their life in a meaningful way, including expressing what the person had done and how it had affected their life. They were also asked to predict how the recipient would feel and perceive these letters, and the researchers contacted recipients to establish what they actually thought and felt.

Those sending letters consistently underestimated how positive recipients felt on receiving the letters and how surprised they were by the content. They also overestimated how awkward the recipients felt, and underestimated how warm the recipients perceived them to be. Age and gender made no difference to the pattern of findings.

The paper, ‘Undervaluing gratitude: Expressers misunderstand the consequences of showing appreciation’, was published in Psychological Science.

 

Not so clever

Most people think they’re smarter than average, according to a systematic survey in the US of people’s beliefs about their own intelligence.

The research, ‘65% of Americans believe they are above average in intelligence: Results of two nationally representative surveys’, led by Patrick Heck from the Geisinger Health System and published in PLOS One, is the first of its kind in 50 years, and comes up with the same finding as 50 years ago.

The research comprised two surveys – one online and one by telephone, each with 750 participants reflecting a cross-section of the population, in terms of sex, age, education and race.

In both surveys, 65% of participants agreed with the statement, “I am more intelligent than the average person.” Men were more likely than women to make the above-average claim – around 70% of men versus 60% of women. A similar pattern was found in both young and old, and there were no clear racial differences.

 

Open-plan reduces interaction

Contrary to common belief, the volume of face-to-face interaction in open-plan offices decreases by around 70%, while email contact increases, suggests research.

Open architecture appears to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from officemates and interact instead over email and IM, suggests what is thought to be the first study to empirically measure both face-to-face and electronic interaction before and after adoption of open-office architecture.

The research, ‘The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration’, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, was carried out by Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban at Harvard Business School and Harvard University. They recruited 52 employees at the global headquarters of a Fortune 500 multinational company that was about to undergo a redesign of an entire floor, stripping out the individual cubicles to create a fully open-plan workspace.

The participants, whose roles included sales, technology and human resources, wore a ‘sociometric badge’ and microphone for three weeks prior to the redesign.

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