We reflect back on our 2004 monograph reviewing the implications of faulty self-judgment for health, education, and the workplace. The review proved popular, no doubt because the importance of accurate self-assessment is best reflected in just how broad the literature is that touches on this topic. We discuss opportunities and challenges to be found in the future study of self-judgment accuracy and error, and suggest that designing interventions aimed at improving self-judgments may prove to be a worthwhile but complex and nuanced task.

A common belief among the public is that rumor is inevitably and inherently false, yet the scholarly definition of rumor as "unsecured information" does not assume that rumors must be false. Rumor research that treats rumors as social exchange predicts that people would not knowingly exchange information that they do not believe. Traditionally folklorists have carefully distinguished among genres of folklore, separating rumors from legend from tales; in contrast, social scientists have not been so careful in distinguishing genres and have sometimes argued that such distinctions may be misleading. Taxonomies can be useful because they allow scholars to see similarities among rumors that they might otherwise ignore. Rumor is often embedded within social institutions–educational, religious, medical, economic, or political–and the claims rumors make may support or resist the needs of those institutions. Rumor is often metaphorically likened to the human life span–birth, growth, and demise.

Although much is known about the pathology of Bacillus thuringiensis against invertebrates, current understanding of its natural ecology is limited. This study evaluated the biodiversity of B.thuringiensis in relation to its interaction with plants. Phylogenetic relationships between 44 reference and field-collected strains, determined using 16S rRNA and gyrB gene sequences, revealed a high degree of variability, similar to that found in databases. An Arabidopsis thaliana in vitro inoculation model was developed to screen the ability of B.thuringiensis to colonise roots. Significant colonisation differences up to 91-fold were observed between strains, and correlation between strain phylogeny and colonisation was found. The genetics and biochemistry of auxin production; presence of the gene encoding indole pyruvate decarboxylase; and the abilities of Bt strains to swarm, grow in rich/minimal media and affect root growth differed between the strains, but only auxin production correlated significantly with ability to colonise roots. Co-inoculation with Burkholderia phytofirmans PsJN or Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 produced no effect on B.thuringiensis colonisation levels, regardless of the co-inoculant. Similarly, root colonisation of A.thaliana mutants impaired in plant defences was not significantly higher compared with controls. This is the first systematic and phylogenetic evaluation of B.thuringiensis interaction with plants.

The plot structure in television advertisements can enhance consumers’ brand attitudes and foster increasing consumer and industry recognition. A corpus analysis of contemporary television advertisements shows that advertisements using the repetition-break plot structure are a small percentage of television advertisements but a large percentage of Clio and Effie award–winning advertisements. They are also likely to attain postings and views on YouTube. Three experiments using television advertisements from contemporary brands show that repetition-break advertisements are persuasive, leading to more favorable brand attitudes and greater purchase intentions than similar plot structures and that this effect is attributable in part to the advertisements being more engaging. Thus, a theoretically explainable and generic plot structure yields effective advertisements. The result is a new and flexible tool for marketing professionals to use to generate advertisements, with guidelines for when and why it should and should not be effective.

Faulty and dysfunctional incentive systems have long interested, and frustrated, managers and organizational scholars alike. In this analysis, we pick up where Kerr (1975) left off and advance an explanation for why bad incentive systems are so prevalent in organizations. We propose that one contributing factor lies in the psychology of people who occupy managerial roles. Although designing effective incentive systems is a challenge wrought with perils for anyone, we believe the psychological consequences and correlates of higher rank within organizations make the challenge more severe for managers. Patterns of promotion and hiring typically yield managers that are more competent than their employees, and ascending to management positions increases individuals’ workload and power. In turn, these factors make managers more egocentrically anchored and cognitively abstract, while also reducing their available cognitive capacity for any given task, all of which we argue limits their ability to design effective incentives for employees. Thus, ironically, those with the power to design incentives may be those least able to effectively do so. We discuss four specific types of bad incentive systems that can arise from these psychological tendencies in managers: those that over-emphasize compensation, generate weak motivation, offer perverse motivation, or are misaligned with organizational culture.“There is no doubt that in our society the superior/subordinate relationship—the hierarchy itself—is crucial in terms of motivation.” (Lawler, 1973, p. 7)

比起Lady Gaga令人疯狂的假发和令人咋舌的着装.更多人记住的是她的名字.如果她叫贝瑟尼·克兰斯顿(Bethany Cranston)或者斯特凡尼·吉曼塔(Stefani Germanotta).也许很快就会被人遗忘. 每个老板都想为他们的新产品、新网站、新公司起一个像Lady Gaga一样叫得响亮的名字.但是如果你曾经有过为产品取名的经历.你就会知道这是一件多么令人受挫的事情了.

对于企业家来说.能够向当地风险资本家阐述自己的商业设想称得上是大事一桩.就像影视新星从独立电影导演那里获得一次试镜机会一样.而如果能够在硅谷最知名的风险投资公司克莱纳·珀金斯做一次商业演示.那就相当于从大导演史蒂芬·斯皮尔伯格那里获得一对一的单独试镜.你要么成为炙手可热的明星.要么毁掉了一生中最好的一次机遇.

The Repetition-Break Plot Structure: A Tool for Persuasion Jeffrey Loewenstein (jeffrey.loewenstein@gmail.com) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 350 Wohlers Hall, 1206 S. Sixth Street Champaign, IL 61820, USA Rajagopal Raghunathan (raj.raghunathan@mccombs.utexas.edu) McCombs School of Business, 1 University Station B6700 Austin, TX 78712 USA Chip Heath (chip.heath@stanford.edu) Stanford Graduate School of Business, 518 Memorial Drive Stanford, CA 94305 USA Abstract The Repetition-Break plot structure, which capitalizes on how people learn through drawing comparisons, generates persuasive narratives. In two experiments, we show that television advertisements using the Repetition-Break plot structure are persuasive, leading to higher brand attitudes and purchase intentions than ads with alternative structures. This effect is partly attributable to comparison-induced surprise. Thus, we have evidence that a theoretically explainable and generic plot structure not only makes for interesting stories, it also makes those stories effective for persuasion. Keywords: Repetition-Break plot structure; advertisements; persuasion; comparison, narratives. Introduction Cognitive science research on how people learn is useful for understanding why advertisements work. Consistent with a variety of research on the importance of stories and examples as a basis for learning (e.g., Gentner, 1989; Rubin, 1995; Schank, 1992), advertisers increasingly seek to persuade consumers by developing involving stories that spur thinking and transport consumers (Adaval & Wyer, 1998; Wang & Calder, 2009; Wentzel, Tomczak & Herrmann, 2010). We show that an old narrative structure found in folktales all around the world (Barbeau, 1960; Chophel, 1984; Zipes, 2002), called the Repetition-Break plot structure (Loewenstein & Heath, 2009), is surprisingly potent in modern advertisements. The plot structure capitalizes on regularities in sequencing examples that foster category and schema learning. It consists of a series of highly similar events (A, A’, A”…) that encourages comparison and forming an expectation of what is to come, followed by a final deviating event (B) that produces surprise and interest (cf., Rozin, Rozin, Appel & Wachtel, 2006). By showing that the Repetition-Break plot structure can be used to persuade, we provide evidence that people can generate broadly valued, exceptionally creative, and effective communications by using recipes built on cognitive science principles (for related approaches studying alternative structures, see Goldenberg, Mazursky & Solomon, 1999; McQuarrie & Mick, 1996; and Pieters, Wedel & Batra, 2010). For example, one of the top advertising awards, the CLIO, gave its “best in show” Grand Clio award for the best television advertisement in 2010 to an advertisement that used the Repetition-Break plot structure. The ad showed a series of striking transformations when objects entered some purportedly magic Tasmanian water: an old bicycle enters the water and turns into a motorcycle, a simple ukulele enters the water and turns into a stunning guitar, a simple kayak turns into a flashy speedboat, and, in the final key transformation, ordinary beer turns into Boag’s Draught, the Australian beer that is the subject of the advertisement. The repeated series of transformations set a pattern that was then extended, surprisingly, to Boag’s Draught beer. In prior research, we found that the Repetition-Break plot structure generated compelling jokes and folktales (Loewenstein & Heath, 2009). We found that jokes and folktales with the Repetition-Break plot structure were more likely than others to be socially selected and liked. We argued that these jokes and folktales, like the Boag’s Draught advertisement, used the Repetition-Break plot structure to generate surprise and interest. In the current studies, we extend this work to show that the Repetition- Break plot structure not only generates surprising and interesting stories, it can leverage that interest to shape people’s attitudes about the subjects of those stories. Cognitive science should examine not only cognitive processing, but also the consequences of that processing. Comparison-Generated Surprise Prior arguments about why surprising and involving stories are effective emphasize that such stories deviate from viewers’ expectations (Peracchio & Tybout, 1986), leading viewers to resolve the incongruity (Speck, 1990). Deviating from prior expectations to generate surprise is also critical to the effectiveness of counterintuitive cultural narratives (e.g., Boyer & Ramble, 2001; Norenzayan, Atran, Faulkner, & Schaller, 2006). The key difference as to why stories relying on the Repetition-Break plot structure are effective is that they do not rely on people already knowing the background