Posts

Big Surprise! Women Face Bias in Business

This shouldn't come as a surprise to any woman in business.  But it's still pretty discouraging.  Did you know that there's bias against women in the working world? We won't talk about the Texas doctor that recently said that gender pay inequity in the medical world is fair because women don't work as hard.  But that's Texas, for you. But back to the study.  Women CEOs in America are paid less, have shorter tenures and their companies are punished in the stock market, even when their firms are just as profitable as those run by men, is the finding of new research from Florida State University.   In addition, women CEOs are less likely to serve as board chair of their companies, and they have a much tougher time landing the top job because there is significantly less demand for their leadership compared to men.   “This research should be eye-opening to people, and I hope they take a closer look,” says Michael Holmes, FSU’s Jim Moran Associate Profes...

Cheat on a Personality Test? People Do, But Not For Much Longer

I don't know how many times you have to take a personality test but did you know they're making it harder to cheat? The test is faster -- and harder to track, according to newswise.com. Psychology researchers have developed a new personality test that is both faster to take and much harder to manipulate by those attempting to control the outcome. “The test draws on the ‘Big Five’ approach to personality assessment, so it’s a new method for personality testing, rather than a new paradigm,” says Adam Meade, a professor of psychology at North Carolina State University and lead author of a paper on the work. “But whether the testing is being done as part of workplace training or for research purposes, there is real value in being able to conduct the test quickly and in making it difficult for users to game the system.” The Big Five theory of personality  focuses on five broad factors: extraversion, conscientiousness, openness, neuroticism and agreeableness. “We used t...

Can You Know If Someone's Friendly Just By Looking at His Face? Maybe Not

Would you believe we think we can tell other peoples  personalities  based on their faces?  Well, if we have pre-existing beliefs about how personality works, that's how  we judge personality.  It all depends on our pre-existing beliefs about how  personality actually works, newswise.com reports. "We make snap judgments of others based not only on their facial appearance, but also on our pre-existing beliefs about how others’ personalities work, finds a new study by a team of psychology researchers," the web site explains. A new study led by  Jonathan Freeman, the paper’s senior author and an associate professor in NYU’s Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science,  underscores how we interpret others’ facial features to form impressions of their personalities.  "People form personality impressions from others’ facial appearance within only a few hundred milliseconds,” observes Freeman.  “Our findings suggest th...

Pray Your CEO Earns What Others Do

We all (or most) may resent the amount of money our CEOs are paid.  But here's a reason to hope yours is as well-compensated at his peers. Tunrs out CEO's who are not paid as well as their peers are more likely to engage in layoffs, according to newswise.com. CEOs who are paid less than their peers are four times more likely to engage in layoffs, says   research led by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York. Scott Bentley, an assistant professor of strategy at Binghamton University’s School of Management, worked on the research as a PhD student at Rutgers University. He and fellow researchers Rebecca Kehoe and Ingrid Fulmer, both associate professors at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, sought to find out if CEO pay was related to layoff announcements made by CEOs. “In terms of strategic decisions that a CEO can make that could lead to higher pay, layoffs are one of the easiest to do,” says Scott Bentley, an assistant ...

To Lie or Not to Lie? Depends on Whether You Want to Help, or Hurt

We all know lying is bad -- well, except for some people. But what about white lies?  When your husband asks if his forehead is receding more, or you, how your jeans fit   . . You get the picture.  But now a new study says that it's never good to lie . According to newswise.com, if  you think you’re helping someone by lying, you may want to think again. T elling a lie in order to help or protect someone—a practice known as prosocial lying—backfires if the person being lied to perceives the lie as paternalistic, says new research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Chicago Booth Assistant Professor  Emma Levine , Deakin University’s Matthew Lupoli, and UCLA Anderson’s Adam Eric Greenberg, find that well-intentioned lies can spark strong resentment from the person who is deceived. The researchers identify a key factor that determines whether people respond positively or negatively to prosocial lies: the extent to which the...

It's OK to Not Be OK

Everyone gets a little rain in their lives, at some point.  I survived breast cancer, my husband was recently treated for colon cancer (not to mention the aneurysm he has on his aorta and leg, which must be surgically removed) and his recently-acquired rheumatoid arthritis.  We have no relationship with either of our families and our son is growing up (with older parents) pretty much just with us.  I live in fear that we will both be gone when he is still too young to manage on his own (he's 17). But people have other disappointments, too -- losing a job, or a loved one, the failure of a relationship. But a new study says that how you respond to adversity can affect how you get through it, according to newswise.com.   Research on how adults deal with adversity has been dominated by studies claiming the most common response is uninterrupted and stable psychological functioning. In other words, this research suggests that most adults are essentially unfaze...

Are You Rude at Work? Your Kids May Suffer

Who's never been there?  A c o-worker takes credit for your work.  Or tells the boss something he told you in private?  Being rude to these people is hard to resist. It seems rudeness has become a way of life today.  But experts are warning that it may be something really bad we're teaching our children , according to newswise.com. Like most of us, I try to set a good example for my son.  At 17 he's pretty much who he's going to be, but it never hurts to remind our kids of the good, decent behavior we so rarely see in our government officials these days. A new study has found that incivility in the workplace -- big duh -- is associated with more negative parenting behavior. When people are rude to their coworkers or treat them badly, they probably don’t realize the unintended victims in that encounter could be the coworkers’ children. Women who experience incivility in the workplace are more likely to engage in stricter, more authoritarian parenting ...