Now Computers Can Tell When You're Bored

Scientific American: 

Boredom manifests itself in more than yawns and glazed eyes. Subtle body cues called noninstrumental movements—squirming, scratching, shifting—also give away a person's mental state. Like teachers and other public speakers, machines can now also pick up on these telltale signs of restlessness. A new study reveals that when computer users tune in to on-screen material, their fidgeting lessens—and algorithms can use that information to discern attentiveness in real time.

To measure engagement, psychobiologist Harry Witchel of Brighton and Sussex Medical School in England and his colleagues outfitted 27 participants with motion-tracking markers that a computer's visual system could follow. The participants then read digital excerpts from a novel by Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and from the European Banking Authority's regulations. Based on motion in the head, torso and legs, the computer could tell when a person had mentally checked out. In fact, an analysis of the cumulative movements revealed that when people read from the novel, they fidgeted nearly 50 percent less than when reading the banking guidelines.

Bilinguals Are Better Negotiators

The Economist:

Ingenious researchers have found that sometimes decision-making in a foreign language is actually better. Researchers at the University of Chicago gave subjects a test with certain traps—easy-looking “right” answers that turned out to be wrong. Those taking it in a second language were more likely to avoid the trap and choose the right answer. Fluid thinking, in other words, has its down-side, and deliberateness an advantage. And one of the same researchers found that even in moral decision-making—such as whether it would be acceptable to kill someone with your own hands to save a larger number of lives—people thought in a more utilitarian, less emotional way when tested in a foreign language. An American working in Denmark says he insisted on having salary negotiations in Danish—asking for more in English was excruciating to him.

What I Learned from Trying to Innovate at The New York Times

John Geraci in Harvard Business Review:

The Times is a perfect example of company-as-organism. Employees at the Times rarely go offsite for lunch or meetings. When you work there, your network is inside the building. That’s where all of the action is, where the valuable information is traded, where the battles are fought, and where the victories are won. When the Core Team or the Newsroom Team or the Beta Team finds a solution, it is a Times solution. Naturally there are inputs and outputs to the company, but like an organism, these are discrete — a mouth, a nose, an ear. At the Times, the Strategy Team pursues and manages strategic relationships for the company, takes in the resources needed to stay alive, and channels those to the rest of the organism. It’s the model of the companies our fathers and mothers worked at. And it worked great for them.

But in today’s world, it doesn’t. Companies with the organism mindset are too slow to adapt to survive in the modern world. The world around them changes, recombines, evolves, and they are stuck with their same old DNA, their same old problems, their same old (failed) attempts at solutions.

The Surprising Habits Of Original Thinkers

How do creative people come up with great ideas? Organizational psychologist Adam Grant studies "originals": thinkers who dream up new ideas and take action to put them into the world. In this TED talk, learn three unexpected habits of originals — including embracing failure. "The greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they're the ones who try the most," Grant says. "You need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones."

Being An Expert Literally Changes How You See Things

The Washington Post:

People who are experts in things can see differences in them that most laypeople can’t. Two little black dresses that look different to fashion lovers may look nearly identical to everyone else. The same goes for birds and birdwatchers, vintage cars and car aficionados, art critics and abstract expressionist painters, and even the faces of our friends and loved ones — when we know something well, it's easier to distinguish its differences.

A fascinating study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University shows that the same principle also governs how we read and interpret language. The study finds evidence that the way we process information visually is influenced by our knowledge and experience.