Questões de Concurso

The power games of smiling at work

    Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), found that people in a low-power position tended to mimic the smile of a person with high status. On the other hand, people who feel powerful return smiles of lower status individuals but refrain from smiling back to others in a high-status position. “Mimicry has been shown to help build relationships, and both power and status seem to affect how we unconsciously employ this strategy,” said Evan Carr, the lead researcher. Participants’ facial responses were detected as minuscule, unconscious movements of facial muscles fractions of a second after being shown videos of people of varying social status.
    All fifty-five subjects in the study mimicked frowns of people they were told were high-status individuals, like doctors, more than those from low-status jobs like fast-food workers. The author of The Nonverbal Advantage: Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work, Carol Kinsey Goman, who is not affiliated with the study, said humans are wired from birth to mimic the facial expressions and body language of others, and subordinates are more prone to this type of behavior of submission. “Subordinates will smile more, they’ll nod more, they’ll tilt their heads more, which is a kind of universal sign of listening”, she said.
    In line with the UCSD study’s findings, Goman said these responses come naturally. The implication of studies like these is that employees can be more conscious of their body language in order to give off the proper signals in specific situations. “Learning what these cues mean, to use it to make a point you want to make, is when body language is helpful”, Goman said.

Internet: <www.cnn.com> (adapted).

The power games of smiling at work

    Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), found that people in a low-power position tended to mimic the smile of a person with high status. On the other hand, people who feel powerful return smiles of lower status individuals but refrain from smiling back to others in a high-status position. “Mimicry has been shown to help build relationships, and both power and status seem to affect how we unconsciously employ this strategy,” said Evan Carr, the lead researcher. Participants’ facial responses were detected as minuscule, unconscious movements of facial muscles fractions of a second after being shown videos of people of varying social status.
    All fifty-five subjects in the study mimicked frowns of people they were told were high-status individuals, like doctors, more than those from low-status jobs like fast-food workers. The author of The Nonverbal Advantage: Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work, Carol Kinsey Goman, who is not affiliated with the study, said humans are wired from birth to mimic the facial expressions and body language of others, and subordinates are more prone to this type of behavior of submission. “Subordinates will smile more, they’ll nod more, they’ll tilt their heads more, which is a kind of universal sign of listening”, she said.
    In line with the UCSD study’s findings, Goman said these responses come naturally. The implication of studies like these is that employees can be more conscious of their body language in order to give off the proper signals in specific situations. “Learning what these cues mean, to use it to make a point you want to make, is when body language is helpful”, Goman said.

Internet: <www.cnn.com> (adapted).

The power games of smiling at work

    Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), found that people in a low-power position tended to mimic the smile of a person with high status. On the other hand, people who feel powerful return smiles of lower status individuals but refrain from smiling back to others in a high-status position. “Mimicry has been shown to help build relationships, and both power and status seem to affect how we unconsciously employ this strategy,” said Evan Carr, the lead researcher. Participants’ facial responses were detected as minuscule, unconscious movements of facial muscles fractions of a second after being shown videos of people of varying social status.
    All fifty-five subjects in the study mimicked frowns of people they were told were high-status individuals, like doctors, more than those from low-status jobs like fast-food workers. The author of The Nonverbal Advantage: Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work, Carol Kinsey Goman, who is not affiliated with the study, said humans are wired from birth to mimic the facial expressions and body language of others, and subordinates are more prone to this type of behavior of submission. “Subordinates will smile more, they’ll nod more, they’ll tilt their heads more, which is a kind of universal sign of listening”, she said.
    In line with the UCSD study’s findings, Goman said these responses come naturally. The implication of studies like these is that employees can be more conscious of their body language in order to give off the proper signals in specific situations. “Learning what these cues mean, to use it to make a point you want to make, is when body language is helpful”, Goman said.

Internet: <www.cnn.com> (adapted).

Microsoft Update Quietly Installs Firefox Extension

    A routine security update for a Microsoft Windows component installed on tens of millions of computers has quietly installed an extra add-on for an untold number of users surfing the Web with Mozilla's Firefox Web browser.
    Earlier this year, Microsoft shipped a bundle of updates known as a "service pack" for a programming platform called the Microsoft .NET Framework, which Microsoft and plenty of thirdparty developers use to __[VERB]__ a variety of interactive programs on Windows.
    The service pack for the .NET Framework, like other updates, was pushed out to users through the Windows Update Web site. A number of readers had never heard of this platform before Windows Update started offering the service pack for it, and many of you wanted to know whether it was okay to go ahead and install this thing. Having earlier checked to see whether the service pack had caused any widespread problems or interfered with third-party programs − and not finding any that warranted waving readers away from this update − I told readers __[A]__
    I'm here to report a small side effect from installing this service pack that I was not aware of until just a few days ago: Apparently, the .NET update automatically installs its own Firefox add-on that is difficult − if not dangerous − to remove, once installed.
    Annoyances.org, which lists various aspects of Windows that are, well, annoying, says "this update adds to Firefox one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities present in all versions of Internet Explorer: the ability for Web sites to easily and quietly
install software on your PC." I'm not sure I'd put things in quite such dire terms, but I'm fairly confident that a decent number of Firefox for Windows users are rabidly anti-Internet Explorer, and would take umbrage at the very notion of Redmond monkeying with the browser in any way.
    Big deal, you say? I can just uninstall the add-on via Firefox's handy Add-ons interface, right? Not so fast. The trouble is, Microsoft has disabled the "uninstall" button on the extension. What's more, Microsoft tells us that the only way to get rid of this thing is to modify the Windows registry, an exercise that − if done imprecisely − can cause Windows systems to fail to boot up.
    Anyway, I'm sure it's not the end of the world, but it's probably infuriating to many readers nonetheless. Firstly − to my readers − I apologize for overlooking this..."feature" of the .NET Framework security update. Secondly − to Microsoft − this is a great example of how not to convince people to trust your security updates.

(Adapted from http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/05/microsoft_update_quietly_insta.html)

Microsoft Update Quietly Installs Firefox Extension

    A routine security update for a Microsoft Windows component installed on tens of millions of computers has quietly installed an extra add-on for an untold number of users surfing the Web with Mozilla's Firefox Web browser.
    Earlier this year, Microsoft shipped a bundle of updates known as a "service pack" for a programming platform called the Microsoft .NET Framework, which Microsoft and plenty of thirdparty developers use to __[VERB]__ a variety of interactive programs on Windows.
    The service pack for the .NET Framework, like other updates, was pushed out to users through the Windows Update Web site. A number of readers had never heard of this platform before Windows Update started offering the service pack for it, and many of you wanted to know whether it was okay to go ahead and install this thing. Having earlier checked to see whether the service pack had caused any widespread problems or interfered with third-party programs − and not finding any that warranted waving readers away from this update − I told readers __[A]__
    I'm here to report a small side effect from installing this service pack that I was not aware of until just a few days ago: Apparently, the .NET update automatically installs its own Firefox add-on that is difficult − if not dangerous − to remove, once installed.
    Annoyances.org, which lists various aspects of Windows that are, well, annoying, says "this update adds to Firefox one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities present in all versions of Internet Explorer: the ability for Web sites to easily and quietly
install software on your PC." I'm not sure I'd put things in quite such dire terms, but I'm fairly confident that a decent number of Firefox for Windows users are rabidly anti-Internet Explorer, and would take umbrage at the very notion of Redmond monkeying with the browser in any way.
    Big deal, you say? I can just uninstall the add-on via Firefox's handy Add-ons interface, right? Not so fast. The trouble is, Microsoft has disabled the "uninstall" button on the extension. What's more, Microsoft tells us that the only way to get rid of this thing is to modify the Windows registry, an exercise that − if done imprecisely − can cause Windows systems to fail to boot up.
    Anyway, I'm sure it's not the end of the world, but it's probably infuriating to many readers nonetheless. Firstly − to my readers − I apologize for overlooking this..."feature" of the .NET Framework security update. Secondly − to Microsoft − this is a great example of how not to convince people to trust your security updates.

(Adapted from http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/05/microsoft_update_quietly_insta.html)