As long as they are good fakes, other people won’t know any different. Even so according to the journal of Psychological Science, “Although the wearer intends them to signal positive traits, wearing counterfeits can in fact send a negative signal to the self.”

So Gino et al. wondered if this has consequences for the self, like an increase in unethical behaviour. To test this out four experiments were carried out in which participants were given designer sunglasses and told in some conditions they were real and in other conditions fake—actually they were always real.

The results showed that, when told the sunglasses were fake, people behaved in more unethical ways than when told they were real. In one experiment, those wearing sunglasses they were told were authentic cheated on a task 30% of the time, while those told they were fake cheated 71% of the time. People even became more cynical, “…participants who believed they were wearing fake sunglasses interpreted other people’s behavior as more dishonest, considered common behaviors to be less truthful, and believed that others would be more likely to behave unethically.”

This suggested that people did feel less authentic when wearing the fake sunglasses, and this led to more unethical behaviour, which came as a surprise: “…when we asked a separate set of students [..] to predict the impact of counterfeits, they were unaware of the consequences for ethical behaviour.” So it seems for designer clothes, far from shrugging off inauthenticity, people sending fake signals about their wealth to others make themselves feel fake, with negative consequences for their behaviour.

This study could well have been commissioned by Gucci, Armani or any other brand (it wasn’t), but still it raises the question of whether these types of findings would extend into areas of everyday life unrelated to branding. Perhaps in general faking it cues feelings of inauthenticity and consequently unethical behaviour? Given this research, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Psyblog Understand Your Mind.

Men and women’s attitudes to relationships have become remarkably similar — when dating women are now much more likely to make the first move.

It will come as no surprise that research finds men prefer this first move to be direct. But do men and women agree on what a direct approach is and why such directness is necessary in the first place?

These questions are addressed in a new study published recently in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Wade et al., 2009). Forty women aged between 19 and 22 were asked to list the types of opening lines they might use to signal their interest in dating a man.

Researchers sorted these into 10 categories, then 40 men and women rated them in order of perceived directness. Here are the 10 categories (with examples) from most to least direct:

1. Directly ask out on a date: Want to go get dinner?
2. Ask if single: Do you have a girlfriend?
3. Give out phone number, or ask for a call: You should call me.
4. Give a compliment: I like your hair.
5. Ask about shared interests: Do you watch The Wire?
6. Indirectly hint at a date: What are you doing later this weekend?
7. Say something funny/sexual humour: Wanna make out?
8. Suggest familiarity: Have we met before?
9. Personal interest questions: How was your weekend?
10. Subtle hello: Hey, what’s your name?

Then men were asked which lines they thought would be most effective for women to use on them. They pretty much put the chat-up lines in order of directness, with the most direct also perceived as the most effective.

When women were asked to do the same they produced a similar list with one exception. Women didn’t rate as highly giving out phone numbers or asking for a call. Overall, though, women clearly understand that men prefer the direct approach.

The only surprise is the low ranking of funny or sexual humour. Men don’t seem to appreciate the lewd come-ons suggested by gender stereotypes. This relatively low rating for a jokey approach is another thing shared by both sexes. Previous work by Bale et al. (2006) found that women weren’t particularly impressed with men trying to be funny, despite what we are often told. It seems opening lines are a serious business for both sexes.

PSYBLOG, Understand Your Mind.

Take Ten Minutes to Calm Down

When angry feelings start bubbling up, take a “time out” for five or ten minutes. Go for a quick walk, take a few deep breaths, take your temper out on your pillow, yell at the sky – do what needs to do be done to get the anger under control. This is one of the most popular anger management tips because it’s effective!

Express Angry Feelings When the Temper is Tame

There’s a difference between expressing angry feelings when enraged and expressing angry feelings after the temper has been tamed (but anger still exists). It’s healthy to express anger. A tip for expressing anger in a healthy way is to use “I feel” statements. For example, “I feel angry when X happens because I’m afraid of Y.” This anger management tip allows people to express anger without letting angry feelings take over, and without offending, ostracising, or scaring others.

Think Carefully About How to Express Anger

People who struggle to control angry feelings know how destructive anger can be! When expressing anger, it’s important to think carefully before sharing feelings.

Plan how to express anger in a constructive manner in advance. Write down the main causes of the anger, and the most important issues to be addressed. Try to stay on topic; that is, avoid discussing problems that occurred in the past.

Find the Root of the Angry Feelings

Sometimes bad tempers flare because of unresolved issues, such as disappointment in one’s parents or a betrayal from a teacher, partner, or family member. If this true, then feelings of uncontrollable anger may be triggered by little issues, such as lost keys or an offhand remark. To control angry feelings, it can help to figure out the real source of the problem.

Attempt to Solve the Problem That Caused Bad Tempers

If a past unresolved issue isn’t causing angry feelings, then be specific about the present problem. Take it a step further and find concrete solutions to the problem. For instance, if it’s a person who triggered the angry feelings, work together to avoid the same problem in the future. If that’s not possible, avoid the person altogether. If it’s a situation that caused the anger, then explore ways to resolve the situation

Anger management tips like these are often difficult to implement at first, but they can become habit surprisingly quickly. It’s important to remember that it takes practice to control angry feelings and tame bad tempers. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it can happen surprisingly quickly.

Laurie-Pawlik Kienlen, Suite 101

Proximity – The vast majority of our friends live close to where we live, or at least where we lived during the time period the friendship developed (Nahemow & Lawton, 1975).  Obviously friendships develop after getting to know someone, and this closeness provides the easiest way to accomplish this goal.  Having assigned seats in a class or group setting would result in more friends who’s last name started with the same letter as yours (Segal, 1974).

Association – We tend to associate our opinions about other people with our current state.  In other words, if you meet someone during a class you really enjoy, they may get more ‘likeability points’ then if you met them during that class you can’t stand.

Similarity – On the other hand, imagine that person above agrees with you this particular class is the worse they have taken.  The agreement or similarity between the two of you would likely result in more attractiveness (Neimeyer & Mitchell, 1988).

Reciprocal Liking – Simply put, we tend to like those better who also like us back.  This may be a result of the feeling we get about ourselves knowing that we are likable.  When we feel good when we are around somebody, we tend to report a higher level of attraction toward that person (Forgas, 1992; Zajonc & McIntosh, 1992).

Physical Attractiveness – Physical attraction plays a role in who we choose as friends, although not as much so as in who we choose as a mate.  Nonetheless, we tend to choose people who we believe to be attractive and who are close to how we see our own physical attractiveness.

This last statement brings up an important factor in how we determine our friends and partner.  Ever wonder why very attractive people tend to ‘hang around’ other very attractive people?  Or why wealthy men seem to end up with physically attractive, perhaps even much younger, women?  There is some truth to these stereotypical scenarios because we tend to assign “social assets” or “attraction points” to everyone we meet. These points are divided into categories such as physical attractiveness, sense of humor, education, and wealth.  If we view education as very important, we may assign more points to this category making it more likely that our friends or our mate will have more education.  If we view wealth as more important then we will be more likely to find a mate who has more money.

We rate ourselves on these same categories and, at least at some level, know our score.  We tend to then pick friends and partners who have a similar score that we do.  Hence an attractive person hangs with other attractive people; or a wealthy older man gets the beautiful younger woman.  Think about your friends and how you would rate them in these categories to find out what is important to you.

Although she felt she could have handled her daughter’s temper tantrum a little better, she never would have guessed how much on edge she remained on the way home, when the guy in the black SUV tried to cut in front her from the left-hand merge lane. Like so many before him, he had sped by the line of cars inching forward in the heavy traffic – the same line in which Rebecca had plugged along patiently for 10 minutes after dropping Katia at school.

Every morning there’s someone like him, she thought, some jerk who can’t wait in line like everybody else. She always let them in, but this time, it was the look on his face, like who the hell does she think she is not to stop her stupid little car for him. She decided that she wasn’t going to take it anymore. She hit the gas pedal just as he tried to cut in front of her. He jammed on his brakes and she swerved into the lane to her right to avoid him, forcing the driver in the van in that lane to jam on her brakes.

Mike, the man in the black SUV, was still seething about how “stupid” she was to have risked an accident over a silly thing like a merge into heavy traffic. Letting him in would have cost her all of one second lost time. He couldn’t believe that he had to put up with such nonsense, on top of dealing all morning with his teenage son, who had broken curfew the night before. Not to mention the fact that he was anticipating a hassle with the new kid on his sales force. He wasn’t going take any lip from this guy who had backed him into a corner by not turning in the paperwork for the few measly sales he made, after repeated warnings.

The young man Mike ended up firing that morning stopped in a bar on his way home. Mike had called security to have him escorted off the premises. That was so unnecessary, the young man thought over and over as he drank. He was only trying to stand up for himself and explain why he was late turning in the paperwork. The security guard was just Mike’s way of making it more humiliating.

That night he grumbled about the humiliation, knowing full well that Mike was home laughing at him. Yet all his wife could do was nag him about getting another job right away and how she was afraid that they couldn’t pay the bills. He slapped her as she persisted and, before the evening was over, brutally punched her in front of their young son.

This was a perfect storm of emotional pollution — people primed by a series of small responses to emotional pollution that accumulate over time. Sooner or later they reach a point where they react badly and uncharacteristically. Rebecca was a client of mine who related her part of the story to me that very day. A week later, Mike became a client in part because he felt terrible having learned that the young man he fired beat up his wife that afternoon. As fate would have it, the young man showed up a couple months later in a court-ordered domestic violence group I lead in Maryland. None of them knew each other.

Although few of us are guilty of direct abuse of other people, and, for the most part, we try not to be rude to others, we all unwittingly contribute to rudeness and abuse by increasing the emotional pollution around us. We are responsible for rude and abusive behavior to the extent that we increase the likelihood of it occurring, even if only those who actually do the rude or abusive behavior are guilty of it.

In the extremely complex social structure of modern living, we cannot self-righteously condemn those who abuse without accepting responsibility for the fact that our own contributions to emotional pollution make it more likely that they will.

Steven Stosny, Ph.D. Psychology Today.

Some of the most difficult disabilities for us to respond to may be difficulties with speech. When a person has trouble forming or finding words and is unable to communicate clearly, so often other people experience him or her as mentally deficient. We fail to stop and realize that the inner person is whole even if the outer person appears impaired. The inability to speak does not necessarily mean that the words are gone from a person’s mind. No more than the inability to move a leg means that a person has forgotten how to walk.

My dear friend Rita has experienced a lot of this. After her strokes she could not speak for eighteen months and then when she did speak she could say words but not the words she meant to say or words that communicated meaning to the people around her. She has come a long way but she has experienced a lot of judgment in the process. Rita tells a story of walking down a street, unable to speak, obviously disabled. A woman with two children walking on the same street, looked at her and took her kids to the other side of the street so they would not encounter Rita.

What did that gesture teach the children? Rather than meeting Rita and witnessing her for who she might be, the children were encouraged to avoid being present with another human being and finding the heart and wholeness in her that were surely there.

Words are important forms of communication but they are not, by any means, the only forms of communication. Gesture, touch and deep listening are every bit as important as words. Recently I met a couple. Let’s call them Arthur and Jean. They have been together a long time. Arthur had a stroke twenty years ago. After recovering many abilities, his remaining deficit is speech. Arthur makes sounds but very few words, and those he does make are disjointed and hard to recognize.

What was striking about this couple was how happy they are. Arthur, in particular, is radiant, joyful. I have rarely seen another human being so delighted with life. Though he does not make words that you and I might easily recognize, Jean understands him completely. I watched her speak for him and watched him nod joyously as she made clear what he meant. Jean has taken the time and the exquisite care to truly witness Arthur, to know him, to see him, to understand him, and to be his bridge to words. Loving him, she recognized that whether or not he could speak clearly, the words and ideas were alive in his mind.

Ordinarily we are not faced with a challenge as great as Arthur’s or Rita’s, but we are human and our communication is not always what we hope it will be. How often have I tried to say something and not gotten it across? I have lost count. We try to be skillful, but we so often don’t succeed. Perhaps we don’t succeed because we fail to look for the heart and wholeness in one another, to take the time to slow down and truly be curious about who is next to us. Who are they? What moves them? This is witnessing. This is not verbal bantering, learning to make a space for someone else’s words in the midst of the back and forth of conversation. Most of us can do that well enough.

Witnessing is different. Perhaps the secret to it is, after all, communicating without using words, at least for a while. Can we truly witness another person if we don’t take the time to pause for a moment, and simply look? What can we see? Subtle changes of expression, skin color, tension, posture, movement? What can we hear? The sound of another person’s breathing. Is it fast? Is it slow? Is it smooth? What happens if we touch his or her hand (assuming we have permission to do this)? Is his or her skin warm or cold? Is she relaxed? Is he reluctant to be touched? There is so much we can learn when we take the time and open our hearts to one another. Taking the time and the opportunity to witness another person is a gift to the person witnessed and to ourselves. Why not give it?

Alison Bonds Shapiro, MBA. Psychology Today.