Study participants read about a visitor to an office who marched in and poured himself a cup of "employee only" coffee without asking.  In another case they read about a bookkeeper that flagrantly bent accounting rules. Participants rated the rule breakers as more in control and powerful compared to people who didn't steal the coffee or break accounting rules.

In a follow-up experiment, participants watched a video of a man at a sidewalk café put his feet on another chair, tap cigarette ashes on the ground and rudely order a meal.  Participants rated the man as more likely to "get to make decisions" and able to "get people to listen to what he says" than participants who saw a video of the same man behaving politely.

What this study appears to indicate is that violating norms is viewed by others as a sign of power, even if the observers would otherwise judge those violations as rude or flatly wrong.  Considering many of the public personalities we venerate, these findings make a lot of sense.

2. Visualize Success if You Want to Fail 

For many years we've heard that visualizing our success is key to attaining it--but an intriguing study conducted in 2011 indicates otherwise. Researcher published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology suggests that not only is positive visualization ineffective, it's counterproductive. A practice proffered to help us succeed may do just the opposite.

During the course of four experiments, researchers demonstrated that conjuring positive fantasies of success drains the energy out of ambition.  When we imagine having reached what we want, our brains fall for the trick. Instead of mustering more energy to get "there," we inadvertently trigger a relaxation response that mimics how we would feel if we'd actually reached the goal.  Physiologically, we slide into our comfy shoes; blood pressure lowers, heart rate decreases, all is well in the success world of our mind's making.

The research also uncovers that the more pressing the need to succeed, the more deflating positive visualization becomes.  One of the experiments tested whether water-deprived participants would experience an energy drain from visualizing a glass of icy cold water (a simple but elegant study design) and found that indeed, in even something so basic, the brain responds as if the goal has been reached.

From a "proof is in the pudding" standpoint, the research showed that participants told to visualize attaining goals throughout the course of the week ended up attaining far fewer goals than a control group told they could mull over the week's challenges any way they liked. The positive visualizers also self-reported feeling less energetic than the control group, and physiological tests supported their claim.

3. Why Relaxed Shoppers Spend More Money

For all its benefits, the state of being relaxed may have a significant downside when it comes to making smart purchasing decisions. A 2011 study suggests that the more relaxed you are when you enter a store, the more money you'll spend.

Researchers used videos and music-pretested for their effects in prior research-to induce two states of relaxation in 670 study participants. One set of participants had a pleasant mind-set and was very relaxed.  The other set felt equally pleasant but not as relaxed, though also not overly stressed.   

Participants were then presented with a variety of products and asked to assess their monetary value using several methods (to ensure that no single method produced a particular result), such as bidding in an online auction.   In the first of six studies, very relaxed participants bid about 11 percent higher for a digital camera than less-relaxed participants.  Conversely, less-relaxed participants' bids were very close to the actual estimated value of the item.  The same effect held true for other auction items, with the result that relaxed participants over-valued items by an average of 15%.

Other items and services tested included a spa treatment, a cruise, bungee jumping, and ice cream.  Across the board, more relaxed participants valued these items well above their actual market value.

The reason for this effect, suggested by the researchers, is that in a relaxed environment your brain does not perceive a threat. This opens the door for thinking at an abstract level about products and services.  For example, when evaluating a camera, a more relaxed person will consider the advantages of owning a product that will capture memories.  A less-relaxed person is more apt to focus on specific features of the camera and whether they are worth the price being asked.

4. The Connection Between Marshmallows and the Financial Crisis

You may recall the famous 1972 Stanford psychology study, conducted by Walter Mischel, in which a group of kids were presented with a plate of marshmallows and told that if they could wait and not eat them now, they'd get a better reward later. When the adults left the room, some of the kids stuffed marshmallows into their mouths with abandon, while others fought back the urge and waited it out.

In the current economic crisis, a lot of economists have wondered if what we have going on is the marshmallow experiment writ large.  A 2011 study in the journal Psychological Science tested the hypothesis and the results suggest that, indeed, we're living in a confectionary crisis of Stay Puft proportions.

Researchers recruited 437 low-to-moderate income people at a community center that was offering tax preparation help.  Each person was given a questionnaire in which they made choices between a smaller, immediate reward and a larger future reward (a common test for finding out if people are willing to delay gratification). 

The time spans for how long they'd have to delay gratification were varied, which layered in an additional test for patience (in other words, you might be willing to delay gratification for a day, but three days pushes you over the limit).  The participants also agreed to let the researchers access their credit scores. The result: The most impatient among the group of volunteers had the lowest credit scores. This result held true even when confounding factors like income levels were accounted for.

It is, of course, unfair to conclude from these results that everyone with a low credit score who participated in this study brought financial disaster upon themselves. Some had lost their jobs, and the subsequent cascade of debt defaults was not something they chose. But the correlation is strong enough to suggest a general connection between faulty short-term desire management and bad financial outcomes.  And with the credit and mortgage industries serving up an endless supply of short-term marshmallows, it's not hard to see how we got here.

5. Why do Fake Cigs Help Some Quit Smoking?