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大家好~~周四经管来了~
今天TIME 1\2是一篇,TIME 3\4\5是一篇;越障选了几次PAPER下来,觉得选作的童鞋比较少,而且普遍反映偏难,所以今天就没有放这个OPTION,待LZ发现比较有趣&合适的PAPER再跟大家分享啦~~总之呢,今天的文章不多,总体上也不太难,希望大家Enjoy~ : )
PS:虽然为了减轻负担/疲劳 今天的越障只节选了部分,但LZ推荐大家把越障文章读完,个人认为The rest部分还是不错的~~
【PART I: SPEED】 Article 1: More Satisfaction, Less Divorce for People Who Meet Spouses Online
By Maia Szalavitz | June 03, 2013
(Check the title later)
【TIME 1】
More than one-third of American marriages today get their start online — and those marriages are more satisfying and are less likely to end in divorce, according to a new study.
The research, which was funded by the online-dating site eHarmony, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Meeting online is no longer an anomaly, and the prospects are good,” says lead author John Cacioppo, a professor of social psychology at the University of Chicago. “That was surprising to me. I didn’t expect that.”
The research involved a Harris Poll of nearly 20,000 Americans who got married between 2005 and 2012. It found that 35% of people met online. But while 8% of those who met off-line got separated or divorced, the percentage for those who met online was just 6%. Although these differences narrowed after controlling for factors that affect divorce rates such as income, education and number of years married, they remained significant, Cacioppo says.
The study also found increased marital satisfaction among people meeting online, compared with off-line venues like at college or in bars.
Eli Finkel, a professor of social psychology at Northwestern University who has published research critical of the online-dating industry, said in e-mail to several journalists that the research is “impressive” with a “large sample” and “fascinating findings.” However, Finkel thinks that the conclusion that online marriages are better is premature.
“The study is a good one,” he says. “It suggests that one can meet a serious romantic partner online. That’s a big deal. But any conclusions that online meeting is better than off-line meeting overstep the evidence.” Finkel explains that the differences between the two venues overall are not large enough to support this claim.
The study does not suggest that meeting online in and of itself actually improves matchmaking or somehow causes marriages to be better. In fact, both online and off, different types of meeting places were linked with different marital prospects.
Not surprisingly, for example, growing up together or meeting at school, through friends or through a religious group were linked with more satisfying marriages than meeting at a bar or club or on a blind date. Oddly, however, meeting at work was just as bad as finding a spouse at a bar or nightclub.
【TIME 1 ENDS – 379 WORDS】
【TIME 2】
In terms of online venues, marriages begun in chat rooms or online communities were less satisfying than those initiated via online-dating sites, although dating sites themselves varied in terms of the marital satisfaction reported.
“In chat rooms and off-line, you meet only the people who are around and not large numbers of people,” Cacioppo says as a possible explanation for this finding. “If you do online dating, all of sudden, there’s a world of possibilities.”
Another potential explanation for differences between online and off-line marital success has to do with personality. “If you have good impulse control, you may be more likely to meet your spouse [deliberately] online rather than impulsively at a bar,” he says.
Of dating sites, eHarmony fared particularly well — a finding that may raise suspicion because of the funding source. However, the study could not determine whether or not this has anything to do with how it matches people or anything else specific to the site. Because it advertises itself to those who are seeking a spouse, eHarmony may simply attract more people who are ready to settle down. A marriage-focused website, Cacioppo says, “is not appealing if you are just looking for a hookup.”
Cacioppo notes one additional reason why the online world might be conducive to matchmaking — an explanation that might surprise many online daters who have met people whose bodies didn’t exactly match their pictures. “There is some experimental work going back more than 30 years now, which [shows that] meeting [via computer or text] leads people on average to be a little more honest and self-disclosing,” he says.
“When you are face to face, there is face-saving,” he explains. “When you don’t [see each other], you can be more comfortable being yourself.” Being more open, the same studies found, led people to like each other more — something that could obviously influence romantic connections.
When it comes to playing Cupid, it’s still not clear whether online dating ultimately makes better matches. But given the large number of people who meet their mates this way, the good news is that at least it doesn’t seem to make matters any worse.
【TIME 2 ENDS – 356 WORDS】
Source: TIME
http://healthland.time.com/2013/06/03/more-satisfaction-less-divorce-for-people-who-meet-spouses-online/#ixzz2VFN5EDRD
Article 2: Buying Your Way to Eternity
By Stephen Cave | June 05, 2013
(Check the title later)
【WARM UP】
Why do you put up with the frustrations and indignities of work? I’m guessing that, first and foremost, it’s because you think you need the cash. But let’s say you’ve got enough to put a roof over your head and food in your belly — or could easily get it putting in fewer hours than you do. Why are you still at your desk? Why do you spend so many hours adding numbers to a bank balance?
The answer might surprise you: Because you believe it will make you live forever.
You might not think you believe this — you might even find the idea absurd. You might argue that the extra money will bring you freedom, or security, or expensive toys. If you’re a little more psychologically savvy, you might say that a higher salary will earn you social status or self esteem. But new research out this week shows these are only the start of the story — brightly colored boats pulled along by a deeper current: the pursuit of immortality.
【170 WORDS】
【TIME 3】
The unconscious connection between acquiring wealth and living forever has been revealed by a team of American and Polish psychologists in a series of ingenious experiments. For example, one study asked half of the participants to count some money, while the other half were counting numbers on ordinary pieces of paper. All then answered questions about their feelings toward dying. The researchers found that those who had been counting cash reported significantly reduced fear of death. It is as if we believe a wad of bills were a magic wand that could keep the Grim Reaper at bay.
The team from the University of Colorado and the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw, Poland, believe that we ascribe a symbolic and emotional value to money that goes far beyond the value of what it can buy for us. We are not rational decision makers when it comes to our finances, dispassionately calculating profit and loss. Instead our judgment is continually distorted by deep-seated associations and anxieties. And the most powerful of these is existential angst, the ever-present fear of doom.
Another of their experiments was based on a well-established, if curious, phenomenon: We tend to overestimate the physical size of things we consider to be important. Half of the participants in this study were subtly reminded of their mortality, while the other half were reminded of dental pain (unpleasant, but not life-threatening). All were then asked to estimate the size of some notes and coins. As the researchers predicted, those who had been primed with the prospect of death overestimated the size of the money significantly more than the others — 34% more in the case of the coins and over 50% more in the case of the notes. This shows that the more people are worried about death, the more important money becomes to them.
【TIME 3 ENDS – 307 WORDS】
【TIME 4】
Of course, cash really can buy you a longer life: It can get you better health care, or a house in a safer neighborhood. But the extent to which we worship the dollar is out of all proportion to the few extra years — if you’re lucky — that a bigger bank balance can bring. Money’s power to assuage our existential anxiety comes not from being able to buy a bullet-proof vest. It comes from the layers of extra meaning we ascribe to wealth.
We are so used to reaching for our wallets or purses that we forget how magical the power of money can seem. Producing a few tattered notes can have people running to do your bidding, or bringing you whatever you desire. A little piece of plastic embossed with a cryptic code can work like a talisman, casting a spell on all around. It is this miraculous power to command the world that our unconscious latches onto and extends into the hope that money can command even death itself.
These experiments were inspired by the work of the American anthropologist Ernest Becker, who argued in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1973 book The Denial of Death that we all need some kind of defense mechanism to protect us from the terror of mortality. For some, this mechanism is religion, for others the pursuit of eternal fame. What this new research shows is that the pursuit of wealth is also such a death-denial mechanism — and the flip side of denying death is pursuing eternal life. Tennessee Williams was right when he wrote in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, “the reason [man] buys everything he can buy is that in the back of his mind he has the crazy hope that one of his purchases will be life everlasting.”
【TIME 4 ENDS – 297 WORDS】
【TIME 5】
The researchers point out that those who think we want to get rich in order to boost our status and self-esteem aren’t wrong. It’s just that status and esteem are themselves serving the deeper need to manage our existential terror. Such ego-boosts make us feel more substantial, more permanent, more immune to the slings and arrows of fortune. As Ernest Becker put it, riches “change one’s natural situation from one of smallness, helplessness, finitude, to one of bigness, control, durability, importance.”
The theory that we are filling our bank accounts in the hope of immortality might sound surprising, but it is affirmed by history. The world is strewn with costly monuments to this yearning: from the original Mausoleum — the huge and wondrous tomb of the Persian King Mausolus — to the tallest building of today, the Khalifa tower, named after the President of the Emirates. And although it is no longer possible to buy your way to the papacy, as Rodrigo Borgia did in 1492, the idea that your eternal prospects are improved by a cash donation is still encouraged by many churches. Meanwhile the Russian multimillionaire Dmitry Itskov is pursuing a more modern version of this dream: spending his fortune on becoming an immortal avatar by 2045.
But history also has another lesson: that the rich end up six feet under just like the rest of us. In exposing this unconscious drive, this research is giving us a warning: no matter why you think you are still at your desk, there is a good chance it is really because of a subliminal urge to beat death. As the researchers point out, this is an important lesson in a time of greed-induced financial crisis. So if you know that money can’t actually buy you eternity, don’t let your subconscious make you a slave to your salary. Perhaps it’s time to take that long vacation.
【TIME 5 ENDS – 313 WORDS】
Source: TIME
http://business.time.com/2013/06/05/buying-your-way-to-eternity/#ixzz2VPeE1j3T
【PART II: OBSTACLE】 Article 3: How to Demotivate Your Best Employees
by Dina Gerdeman
(Check the title later)
It would seem to make sense that when companies recognize their workers with awards, they are likely to see a boost in morale and perhaps even inspire them to work harder.
It turns out that sometimes rewarding employees for good behavior can actually backfire, leading to a drop in motivation and productivity.
More than 80 percent of companies dole out work-related awards like "employee of the month" or "top salesperson." Managers often view these awards as inexpensive ways to improve worker performance; many believe that when employees bask in the glow of corporate praise, they may even feel motivated to work harder over the long term.
But new research suggests that some awards may actually have the opposite effect, according to a recent paper called The Dirty Laundry of Employee Award Programs: Evidence from the Field, written by Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Ian Larkin, along with professor Lamar Pierce and doctoral student Timothy Gubler from the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis.
The researchers studied an attendance award program initiated by managers at one of the five commercial-industrial laundries owned by the same midwestern company. Perfect attendance was defined as not having any unexcused absences or tardy shift arrivals during the month.
The plant managers had all the right intentions when they implemented the award program. Absenteeism and tardiness costs US companies as much as $3 billion a year. And in the case of the laundry plant, one worker's tardiness or absence can affect another's productivity. If one team of workers falls behind on the job, for example, other workers down the line are left to sit idle.
The plant's attendance award program began in March 2011 and continued for nine months. Employees with perfect attendance for a month, including no unexcused absences or tardy shift arrivals, were entered into a drawing to win a $75 gift card to a local restaurant or store; the winner's name was drawn at a meeting attended by all the employees. At the end of the sixth month, the plant manager held another drawing for a $100 gift card for all employees with perfect attendance records over the previous six months.
The program did produce one benefit the plant managers were looking for: it reduced the average level of tardiness and led to more punctual arrivals for the workers who participated.
AIRING DIRTY LAUNDRY
Yet when Larkin and his colleagues took a closer look at employee time sheets and records showing the amount of laundry that actually got done both before and after the program was introduced, they found that the plant—unlike the other four that didn't have an award program—experienced some problems:
First, employees ended up "gaming" the program, showing up on time only when they were eligible for the award and, in some cases, calling in sick rather than reporting late. Most interestingly, workers were 50 percent more likely to have an unplanned "single absence" after the award was implemented, suggesting that employees who would otherwise have arrived to work tardy on a certain day might instead either call in sick to avoid disqualification or else simply stay home because they would be disqualified from the award regardless.
Also, while punctuality improved during the first few months of the program, old patterns of tardiness started to emerge in later months. And once employees became disqualified and the carrot of the award was out of their reach, their punctual behavior slipped back downhill. Larkin says this runs counter to what some people believe—that such an award program might instill a long-term pattern of on-time performance in workers.
The hope is that with the award "you get them to do what you want them to do in a habitual way," Larkin says. "But we can say it's the exact opposite. There was only a change in behavior while people were eligible for the award."
Second, and perhaps more significantly, stellar employees who previously had excellent attendance and were highly productive ended up suffering a 6 to 8 percent productivity decrease after the program was introduced. This suggests that these employees were actually turned off—and their motivation dropped—when the managers introduced awards for good behavior they were already exhibiting.
These workers may have believed that the award program was unfair; after all, they had been showing up to work on time before the attendance program, so they wondered why an award was necessary and why some employees who used to show up late were winning the award.
"The award demotivated these employees," says Larkin, who interviewed workers at the plant to gain additional insight. "people believed it was unfair to recognize people who only changed their behavior because of this award. They felt that 'I'm a hard worker, and now they're giving awards for something like attendance. What about me?' "
All in all, the award program actually led to a decrease in plant productivity by 1.4 percent, which added up to a cost of almost $1,500 a month for the plant.
"Having your top performers demotivated for all eight hours on the job ended up creating a much bigger productivity hit than having the extra five minutes of work from someone who came habitually late," Larkin says.
Ultimately, the researchers concluded that rewarding one behavior sometimes can "crowd out" intrinsic motivation in another.
【OBSTACLE ENDS – 889 WORDS】
【THE REST】
REWARDS THAT WORK
Despite the fact that this particular award brought more harm than good, many other types of award incentives have proven beneficial for companies. But Larkin says corporate managers should manage them closely to make sure that employees aren't gaming the system and that the programs aren't fostering unintended negative effects.
"Many award programs have created value and are cost-effective for companies," he says. "Our paper shouldn't be taken as a blanket criticism of awards. You can't say awards are good or bad. It depends on how they're implemented."
This particular attendance award may have been especially flawed because rather than rewarding workers for exceptional performance, it rewarded them for fulfilling a basic job expectation.
"A lot of awards are focused on identifying people at the top of the class or people who went the extra mile," Larkin says. "This award did not recognize people who went above and beyond. It was an award for a behavior that employees should do."
Also, Larkin believes that awards are more effective when they recognize good behavior in the past, rather than behavior going forward. Plus awards for past performance aren't likely to see as much gaming, he says.
"It's motivational to hear that you've done a good job and are being recognized for doing the right thing," he says. "And it provides a good example for other people. people aren't being rewarded because they changed their behavior to match what the manager wanted or by gaming."
Larkin says that in the laundry study, the reward itself—gift cards—may have led to a higher likelihood of gaming. Sometimes it's better to keep money out of the deal.
"people respond very strongly to monetary incentives with this gaming mentality," he says. "When I talk to companies about award programs, I find myself telling them, 'Don't put in that $500 or the trip to the Bahamas.' It sounds like a nice thing to put in, but it also changes the psychological mindset people have."
Instead, Larkin says that companies may fare better just by giving people a nice plaque, sending an email to staff, or calling a meeting to recognize certain workers publicly in front of the whole crew.
"You can't put a price on that. The recognition of hearing you did a good job and that others are hearing about it is worth more than money."
【395 WORDS】
Source: Harvard Business School - Working Knowledge
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6946.html
做完作业好开心!大家快来奖励自己一下!多款猴头在此守候,总有一款适合你!
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