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If psychology is going to help combat class-based inequalities, it needs to ensure that people from different classes are represented in research in the first place. Given that social class is related to differences in values, ways of thinking, and behaviour, it's vital that samples include participants from diverse class backgrounds. As the team concludes: 'Our findings suggest that class-based inequality may also reproduce, in part, because class contexts can imbue advantaged individuals with an exaggerated belief that they are better than others, and outside observers may conflate this miscalibrated confidence with evidence of competence. [Extracted from the article]

Once again, tolerance appeared to be an intermediate state for participants: wellbeing was higher in the tolerance condition than it was in the discrimination condition, but not as high as in the acceptance condition. Proprioception Proprioception - the sensing of the location of our body parts in space - has been relatively ignored, but it's critical for confidence in using our bodies. Research shows that a healthy vestibular system is important not only for balance but for our sense of being grounded inside a physical body; in fact, people with vestibular problems are more likely to report out-of-body experiences. Yoko Ichino, the ballet mistress at Northern Ballet, based in Leeds, teaches regular proprioception classes, during which students are required to practise complex moves with their eyes shut. [Extracted from the article]

Good negotiators are more likely to secure a pay rise, get the house or job they want, and keep the peace at home. However, the effect of anger does depend on the cultural context: a 2010 study (see tinyurl.com/digest090710) found that while it could help in a negotiation with someone from a European background, it backfired in negotiations with someone from an East Asian background, where traditionally such behaviour is regarded as inappropriate. Those who ranked higher on the Dark Triad spectrum did better in face-to-face negotiations than negotiations via the computer, whereas those who'd ranked low in these traits did better online compared to in-person. This also implies, of course that if you think your boss might have Dark Triad tendencies, it could be better to conduct a negotiation over a pay rise by email rather than face-to-face. [Extracted from the article]

In the first of two studies, the team recruited 53 men who worked as restaurant ticket collectors in beef noodle restaurants in China, plus 53 security guards as a control group. But did working as a ticket collector improve those participants' working memory updating ability, or were they better at this to begin with? So, these results support the idea that working as a restaurant ticket collector does improve working memory updating. [Extracted from the article]

People living in areas where incomes are more similar tend to report greater wellbeing - and this holds not just for overall high-income regions, such as Scandinavian countries, but regions where money isn't used much at all, such as the Solomon Islands. The researchers think this could be because even though there is lower social mobility and also greater income inequality in the US compared with western Europe, Americans are greater believers in the possibility of social mobility. Matthew A. Killingsworth at the University of Pennsylvania, US, analysed data from more than 33,000 employed adults in the US, who had been asked to report on their own wellbeing at random timepoints via a smart phone app. [Extracted from the article]

Covid-19 has changed our working lives, perhaps for good. In January 2019 (pre-Covid-19), 35 per cent of UK employees surveyed for the CIPD (a professional human resources body) reported that work had a positive impact on their mental health, while 27 per cent said that work had a negative impact. All of this suggests that whatever employers can do to enhance employee autonomy at "work" - and home-working brings its own challenges, of course - should be good for their mental health. [Extracted from the article]