Does it work?   “It could certainly work.” “It certainly works.”   Does it, really?   “Presumably.” “Apparently.” “Evidently.”   Each adverb is laden with varying degrees of uncertainty, some of which depend on your understanding of English to perceive. Yet even as native English speakers, Australians and Canadians interpreted commonly used adverbs slightly differently in terms of the level of confidence each word conveyed. Imagine how much more complex it becomes when the speaker and listener do not speak the same native language. When the patient wants a straight answer and at the same time listens through a filter … Continue reading The Uncer-ten-ty of Adverbs

Are you the same as you were 10 years ago? 5 years ago? Even 6 months ago?   I would venture to guess, probably not.   We go through change all the time–sometimes it happens to us, and other times we make it happen. We make new connections and we lose some connections. We change jobs, and likely change careers over time.   For some people, their life partner is the constant throughout these reinventions. A study of partnered people examined the domains that determined life satisfaction over different phases of life (quantitatively: young, middle-aged, and old) and found that … Continue reading Be Mine for All Nine Lives

“Two brains are better than one.” This magical expression divides an individual task into a partnered exercise–a great way to delegate part of the work and safeguard it against potential fallacies of a solo flyer. The same logic invites multiple people into a bubble of creativity by virtue of the popular activity of brainstorming. Collective intelligence tells us, after all, that collective intelligence is greater than individual intelligence.   What makes this machinery tick? It turns out that “social sensitivity,” or the ability to read each other, is positively and significantly correlated with collective intelligence. In particular, the individual lowest … Continue reading Collabor-eight!