hotmedfaxnow2020

I once heard a sermon -- at Easter, of all times! -- that had actually been presented by another pastor. Essentially, it was a counterfeit sermon! Now a new study says that something as simple as a repeated anecdote can make speakers less authentic , according to newswise.com. The website reports that a mainstay of the political campaign trail is the heartfelt, homespun anecdote. It helps politicians build rapport with voters and establish themselves as appealing and relatable. But new research from the University of Georgia Terry College of Business suggests those well-traveled anecdotes could be sabotaging that quest for connection , newswise explains. The website points out that research conducted by Rosanna K. Smith, an assistant professor of marketing at UGA, and her co-author Rachel Gershon, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of California San Diego, shows that witnessing people repeat a story or anecdote leads their audience to view them as less au...

Blondes are always stupid.  Men aren't as empathetic as women.  Women are worse drivers than men. Strong convictions .  But are they always correct?  Strong convictions can blind us to information that challenges them, according to a new study reported by newswise.com. When people are highly confident in a decision, they take in information that confirms their decision, but fail to process information which contradicts it, finds a University College London brain (UCL)imaging study. The study, published in  Nature Communications , helps to explain the neural processes that contribute to the confirmation bias entrenched in most people's thought processes, the website notes. It's called bias, and "Our study found that our brains become blind to contrary evidence when we are highly confident, which might explain why we don't change our minds in light of new information," newswise quotes lead author, PhD candidate Max Rollwage (Wellcome Centre for Human Ne...

Are you surprised?  Turns out women tell are told more  white lies than men in evaluations.   Newswise.com reports that white lies, while important when judging someone's haircut, or how your spouse looks in jeans,  can cause problems in the workplace, where honest feedback, even when it’s negative, is important. Women are more likely to be given i naccurate performance feedback , says new research by Lily Jampol, Ph.D. ’14, and  Vivian Zayas , associate professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University. Though bosses may do it to be nice,  underperforming women are given less truthful but kinder performance feedback compared to equally underperforming men. White lies are told to preserve relationships, avoid harming the other person or to present one’s self in a positive light, among other reasons, the website quotes Jampol says. Though they often reflect benign intentions, in some contexts they can be proble...

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/opinion/article/Opinion-Mom-survives-Year-1-of-college-15259947.php?fbclid=IwAR3c68BCPP7X8XCinhrpfkzIoXNuwPf_rbCvzUkF5glhwPK_v-tp9J9z2F0

One of the best things about me is that I'm pretty much always prepared . Now a new study is saying that might not be such a good thing. According to newswise.com, if you are, " you may bring that sense of confidence into other parts of your life for which you might not be nearly so prepared." In three studies, the website reports, researchers found that feelings of preparedness in one area made people more confident in their beliefs about something completely different – whether those thoughts were positive or negative.  The findings suggest that people may sometimes feel confident about a belief or decision for totally unrelated reasons, newswise quotes  Patrick Carroll , lead author of the study and associate professor of  psychology at The Ohio State University  at Lima. "For example, you may have been leaning slightly toward support of one candidate in a local election when you started preparing for a job interview. Once you’re prepared for the inter...

So you've lost everything in the coronavirus meltdown. But be comforted.  People with money tend to be more lonely than the rest of us.  That's because people who base their self-worth on their financial success  o ften feel that way in everyday life, a newly published study by the University at Buffalo and Harvard Business School, newswise.com reports. “When people base their self-worth on financial success, they experience feelings of pressure and a lack of autonomy, which are associated with negative social outcomes,” the web site quotes says Lora Park, an associate professor of psychology at UB and one of the paper’s co-authors. “Feeling that pressure to achieve financial goals means we’re putting ourselves to work at the cost of spending time with loved ones, and it’s that lack of time spent with people close to us that’s associated with feeling lonely and disconnected,” adds Deborah Ward, a UB graduate student and adjunct faculty member at the UB’s psycho...

Can there ever be too many men ?   Some think more men, more problems.  But now a new study says that may not be true. The study focused on the fact that, since men are more prone to competitive risk-taking and violent behavior, what happens when the number of men is greater than the number of women in a population?    According to research by Florida State University Professor of Psychology Jon Maner, the answers might not be what you expect, says newswise.com.   “ When men outnumber women in a given ecology, intuition might suggest that rates of violent crime would skyrocket, marriages would destabilize and many children would be born out of wedlock, ” the web site quotes him .  “ Intriguingly, the opposite has been observed. ”   Although ecological sex ratios have been investigated extensively in nonhuman  species,  they  play a crucial role in humans as well. Many factors can produce sex ratio imbalances, includ...