Eating The Same Foods Promotes Trust And Closeness Between People

The findings could also be used to help build rapport on a date.

The findings could also be used to help build rapport on a date.

Eating the same foods helps to promote trust and closeness between people.

The new study found people reached agreements twice as quickly and were more generous with their money after eating the same foods together.

The findings could also be used to help build rapport on a date.

Professor Ayelet Fishbach

“People tend to think that they use logic to make decisions, and they are largely unaware that food preferences can influence their thinking.

On a very basic level, food can be used strategically to help people work together and build trust.”

In the series of experiments people ate similar or dissimilar foods together.

Then they carried out a labour negotiation or pretended they were fund managers.

The food choices were simple: in one study it was just different types of candy.

The experiments showed that eating the same foods increased trust and collaboration.

When eating the same foods, “fund managers” invested more in a company and labour disputes were resolved in half the time.

The researchers also wondered if two people wearing a similar shirt would have the same effect.

It didn’t.

There seems to be something important and intimate about the food we choose to eat.

Professor Fishbach said:

“I think food is powerful because it is something that we put into our bodies and we need to trust it in order to do that.

I hope our research will be used to connect people and facilitate conflict resolution.

Our next goal is studying whether sharing food has an impact on trust and cooperation.”

The study is to be published next year (2017) in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

Image credit: Emilãine Vieira

The Type Of Face That Makes You Look Trustworthy

The facial features that people rates as more trustworthy might surprise you.

The facial features that people rates as more trustworthy might surprise you.

While people often expect the most attractive people to inspire the most trust in others, this isn’t the case.

Average-looking faces are considered most trustworthy, psychological research finds.

The reason may be down to the ‘typicality’ of an average-looking face.

Dr Carmel Sofer, who led the research, said:

“Face typicality likely indicates familiarity and cultural affiliation — as such, these findings have important implications for understanding social perception, including cross-cultural perceptions and interactions.”

As people’s faces get more distinctive — irrespective of whether it is more or less attractive — it gets less trustworthy.

Dr Sofer said:

“Although face typicality did not matter for attractiveness judgments, it mattered a great deal for trustworthiness judgments.

This effect may have been overlooked, because trustworthiness and attractiveness judgments are generally highly correlated in research.”

The study’s authors write:

“By showing the influence of face typicality on perceived trustworthiness, our findings cast a new light on how face typicality influences social perception.

They highlight the social meaning of the typical face because trustworthiness judgments approximate the general evaluation of faces.”

Dr Sofer said:

“We are interested in how people judge face trustworthiness when visiting other countries and how the locals perceive the visitors.

In addition, we plan to study how face typicality influences trustworthiness judgments, when other factors such as emotional expressions are present.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Sofer et al., 2014).

Robot image from Shutterstock

This Clothing Makes Getting Job Interview 5 Times More Likely

Women applied for 400 real jobs to test the effect of clothing in their profile picture.

Women applied for 400 real jobs to test the effect of clothing in their profile picture.

Women whose resumes include a picture of themselves in low-cut or revealing tops are five times more likely to be interviewed, new research finds.

The five-year study had two women send out resumes for real accountancy and sales positions.

Each applied for 200 roles using almost identical resumes.

The only difference was that half the resumes included a picture of themselves conservatively dressed.

For the other half they were wearing more revealing clothing.

Here are two of the images actually used in the study:

The results revealed an astonishingly large effect.

When the two women applied for the sales jobs, they received 62 more interviews when the more revealing picture was included.

That was five times the number of interviews they got when applying with the same resume but more conservative dress.

Apparently accountants are just as prone to the bias: the low-cut top garnered 68 more interview offers than the conservatively dressed option.

Dr Sevag Kertechian, the study’s author, said:

“Our results showed interesting trends as low-cut dresses significantly influenced the choice of the recruiters, even for accounting positions.

Regardless of the job, whether customer-facing saleswoman or office-based accountant, the candidate with the low cut clothing received more positive answers.

The results were quite shocking and negative but not necessarily surprising – they show we need to conduct more research.”

The study were presented at the “Appearance Matters” Conference in London in 2016: it is the world’s largest event on body image and disfigurement.

How To Instantly Make Someone’s Belief Stronger

Labelling people’s thoughts can instantly act as a trigger.

Labelling people’s thoughts can instantly act as a trigger.

Labelling an opinion ‘moral’ instantly makes it more resistant to change, a new study finds.

Mr Andrew Luttrell, the study’s first author, said:

“The perception that an attitude we hold is based on morality is enough to strengthen it.

For many people, morality implies a universality, an ultimate truth.

It is a conviction that is not easily changed.”

The researchers found it was surprisingly easy to strengthen people’s opinions by labelling them moral.

Professor Richard Petty, a study co-author, said:

“Morality can act as a trigger — you can attach the label to nearly any belief and instantly make that belief stronger.”

The results come from a series of experiments testing different ways of labelling people’s opinions.

One experiment compared labelling an opinion ‘moral’ with labelling it in terms of ‘tradition and equality’.

Mr Luttrell said:

“Morality had a lot more impact than the values of tradition and equality.

Students were more likely to act on their opinion of the student exam policy if they thought it had to do with morality.”

Another experiment on the subject of recycling tested the morality principle against notions of practicality.

Again, morality won out.

Mr Luttrell said:

“People held on to their moral beliefs in a way they didn’t for other values we studied, like tradition, equality and practicality.

But what was remarkable was how easy it was to lead people into thinking their views were based on moral principles.

People may be more willing to vote for a candidate or give money to an advocacy group if they believe it is a matter of morality.

They’re also less likely to be swayed by the opposition.”

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (Lutrell et al., 2016).

Image credit: malloreigh

People Good At Swearing Have This Major Advantage

Researchers find the average number of swear words people can list in 60 seconds — and what it say about them.

Researchers find the average number of swear words people can list in 60 seconds — and what it say about them.

People who know more swear words also have stronger verbal abilities, a new study finds.

Knowing how to swear, then, is not a sign of a poor vocabulary — in fact it signals a better vocabulary.

The study tested how many different swear words people could think of in 60 seconds.

This was compared with other non-swearing words, such as animal names and words beginning with a particular letter.

The study found that the average number of swear words people could recall in 60 seconds was 9 (seems low?!).

This compared to an average of 14 non-swear words and 22 different animal words.

The study’s authors write:

“We cannot help but judge others on the basis of their speech.

Unfortunately, when it comes to taboo language, it is a common assumption that people who swear frequently are lazy, do not have an adequate vocabulary, lack education, or simply cannot control themselves.

The overall finding of this set of studies, that taboo fluency is positively correlated with other measures of verbal fluency, undermines the POV [Poverty of Vocabulary] view of swearing.

That is, a voluminous taboo lexicon may better be considered an indicator of healthy verbal abilities rather than a cover for their deficiencies.

Speakers who use taboo words understand their general expressive content as well as nuanced distinctions that must be drawn to use slurs appropriately.”

One caveat: this study does not test or suggest that using lots of swear words is a sign of a larger vocabulary.

It only tested (and found) that knowing them is linked to a larger vocabulary.

So there’s still no excuse for turning the air blue…

…unless, of course, you want to help persuade someone of your point of view.

Yes, incredibly, light swearing at the start or end of a persuasive speech can actually help influence an audience, according to one study on The Persuasive Power of Swearing.

The new study was published in the journal Language Sciences (Jay & Jay, 2015).

Image credit: Jeff Gill