Detail from a plaster cast of a relief from the temple of Beit el-Wali, Lower Nubia, 13th century BCE. Source: Metropolitan Museum, New York; photographed by Hans Ollermann.
An amusing bit of research from Michelle M. Duguid (Olin Business School, Washington University), and Jack Concalo (Cornell), published in Psychological science (pay).
In a series of three experiments, the researchers found a definite correlation between feeling powerful and feeling tall, and even suggest that future research may want to examine whether employers should consider placing short high-ranking workers in higher offices to raise their psychological sense of power.
- There seems to be a general tendency (often noted by philosophers in one guise or another) for the human mind to seek or insist on harmony between “inside” and “outside” or between visible and invisible characteristics. Socially big people are pictured as big, imagine themselves big. The blessed must be beautiful, their faces luminous.
- I would call this “research-lite”. Research-lite makes for good press. You can summarize it in a sentence. It may well be that scientific effort, driven more and more by requirements of “impact” (now included in the research assessment criteria under which departments are evaluated in the UK), will become increasingly lite, or at least be compelled to present itself as lite. That is in part because having “impact” requires that research answer not only to the internal demands of the disciplines within which it is conducted but to journalistic criteria of newsworthiness, at a time when corporate media tend to treat news as a form of entertainment.
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