Business, Management, Marketing, Money, Tax, Law, People

Ever been in a situation where you just can’t get your message across? New research by Zakary Tormala and Mohamed Hussein suggests that you might want to rethink which pronouns you deploy. Tormala, a professor of marketing at Stanford GSB, and Hussein, a PhD candidate who studies the intersection between consumer behavior and politics, looked at how using “you” versus “we” pronouns affected how people responded to messages in settings…

Imagine Thursday. Does Thursday have a color? What about the sound of rain — does that sound taste like chocolate? Or does the sound of a saxophone feel triangular to you? For about 3% of the population, the sharp lines between our senses blend together. Textures may have tastes, sounds, shapes, numbers may have colors. This sensory crosstalk is called synesthesia, and it's not a disorder, just a different way of…

Americans aren’t good at managing their money — and there are signs that the problem is getting worse. Already saddled with record levels of student debt, young adults today, for example, are even more unlikely to monitor their credit card debt and bank balances. Some people trick themselves into thinking that store refunds or anything less than $5 amount to free money. And too many people pay for online subscriptions…

Science has a replication problem. In recent years, it has come to light that the findings of many studies, particularly those in social psychology, cannot be reproduced by other scientists. When this happens, the data, methods, and interpretation of the study’s results are often called into question, creating a crisis of confidence. “When people don’t trust science, that’s bad for society,” said Jon Krosnick, the Frederic O. Glover Professor of…