Smart fashion choices at work make you smarter

When it comes to work attire, many of us are worried about the message our fashion choices send to colleagues. But what about the message our clothing sends to us? What we choose to wear to the office or factory can actually make us smarter or dumber, found one recent study. And that’s bad news for employees who think it’s casual Friday every day. “Clothes can have profound and systematic psychological and behavioral consequences for their wearers,” according to a study on the effects of clothing on employees by professors at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, which was published in the recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The study found that work garb associated with “attentiveness and carefulness” actually makes workers more attentive and careful. In testing the theory, the researchers used a lab coat on their subjects and looked at how wearing the coat impacted their work. It turned out, the study found, that “physically wearing a lab coat increased selective attention compared to not wearing a lab coat.” So does that mean shorts and miniskirts make you dumber? It depends. “To the extent that a person associated high heels and miniskirts with less intelligence, then it could make a person less attentive,” said Adam Galinsky, a professor of ethics and decisions in management, and a coauthor of the article. “But if a person associated those clothes with a commanding presence then wearing those clothes could make them more assertive and more attentive.” Galinsky calls the process of how fashion influences us, “enclothed cognition,” and when that happens, individuals are mentally giving the clothing they’re wearing “symbolic meaning.” The research may lend support to companies that impose dress codes. A draconian clothing policy implemented by Swiss bank UBS in 2010 that called for workers to wear certain types of underwear, among other restrictions, was ridiculed around the globe, prompting the bank to revise the code last year.

Is sharing the key to advanced society?

The ability to share knowledge and learn from each other may be the key difference between people and chimpanzees that helped humans to dominate the modern world, scientists have suggested. The research in the journal Science aimed to discover what has allowed humans to establish what is known as cumulative culture, or a gathering of knowledge that ratchets up with technology improvements over time. While previous studies have shown that chimps can learn from each other, none have compared their abilities to humans in the same tests, and scientists have long debated what exactly is needed to build up increasing complex cultural knowledge. The current study compared groups of three- and four-year-old children to separate groups of chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys, all of whom attempted to get treats out of a three-step puzzle box. Chimps and capuchins largely failed to advance in the three levels, with just one chimp reaching stage three after 30 hours and no capuchins attaining that level in 53 hours. However, five of the eight groups of children tested had at least two members who reached stage three of the puzzle in just 2.5 hours. The difference was that children were better able to learn from watching demonstrators and to communicate and share their knowledge with peers than the monkeys, the team of US, French and British researchers said. Kids also showed measures of goodwill, or prosociality, that their beastly cousins did not. “Teaching, communication, observational learning, and prosociality all played important roles in human cultural learning but were absent (or played an impoverished role) in the learning of chimpanzees and capuchins,” said the study.

Where’s the support for black students?

An incredibly high proportion of young black people are now unemployed. Recently, Diane Abbott lamented the tragedy of the 44%. But, after further investigation, it’s now known that a staggering 50% of the UK’s young black males are unemployed and unemployment among young black women stands at an unpalatable 39.1%. The statistics for black people as a whole are spiralling out of control. Black and minority ethnic communities are well represented in the public sector, but the public sector is becoming increasingly under threat by cuts. To echo Abbott, this is a tragedy – one that is exacerbated by a privatisation agenda that shows little regard for the public good of services that lift people out of poverty. Whether we’re in or out of education, young black people are consistently at a disadvantage. The National Union of Students’ Race for Equality report shows that a sixth of black students have experienced racism in their place of study. There are more black students at London Metropolitan University than in the entire Russell Group of research-intensive universities, exposing fundamental flaws in the access and admissions of black students into elite higher education institutions. Black students are less likely than their white counterparts to achieve a first-class degree – and studies from the Higher Education Academy have found correlation between being a minority ethic student and lower levels of degree attainment in general. There’s very little evidence to suggest that black students, by virtue of being in education, escape unemployment forever, or will outstrip their white counterparts when it comes to vying for a position in the workplace. There’s also evidence to suggest that early unemployment can have a seriously detrimental effect on earning potential. Young, unemployed black men and women are growing up institutionally disadvantaged by a system that has the odds stacked against them.

Legal high may contain illegal ingredient

A drug marketed as a “legal high” is believed to contain an illegal ingredient. Dime, a white powder that is sold in a capsule, has been advertised as an “amazing mood amplifier”, and a mix between ecstasy and LSD “yet completely legal”. But the National Drug Intelligence Bureau has launched an investigation into the synthetic drug, believing it may contain a type of Class C controlled substance known as 2CE. Drugs that fall into Class C of the Misuse of Drugs Act are banned. TVNZ’s Close Up programme had the drug tested by Environmental Science and Research, which confirmed to the show that it contained 25C-NBOMe, another Class C substance. A police spokeswoman refused to say when the drug was brought to the bureau’s attention, when it launched its investigation or whether police had confiscated any Dime capsules. Kurt von Keisenberg, who has been importing the drug into New Zealand, told Close Up he believed it was legal and was surprised that the test had shown it contained a controlled substance. He said that the drug was purchased from a Polish company but understood it was manufactured in China. When asked whether he ever got it tested he replied: “I didn’t think there was a need”. Dime was being sold online until the weekend, when the website and its Twitter account were taken down. The drug had only been sold online for three weeks Close Up reported, however a Wellington drug-user said a drug by the same name has been around since at least the middle of last year.