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TED, a nonprofit organization known for its presentations of short, provocative talks on cutting-edge ideas, has compiled the 20 most popular TED Talks, which can be viewed on the organization’s website. Although TED began as a conference on Technology, Entertainment and Design, TED talks now cover a variety of topics and issues, and many of…

September 9, 2014 When Apple releases new software updates or new products, the company stages a special event to explain – and hype – the new features. In order to build excitement around the new releases, which have been shrouded in secrecy as they are developed, the company drops hints along the way before chief…

August 7, 2014 We recently came across an intriguing article by The Atlantic’s senior editor Derek Thompson claiming that even though people will say that they regularly read hard news about politics and international news, they are actually turning to “easy-reads” such as “quizzes, lists, and emotional poppers.” In other words, we lie about what…

Flickr – Martin Thomas, Applause The attention span of the average American is short – and getting shorter. Research suggests that the average adult attention span is now only 5 minutes, down from 12 minutes just a decade ago. And on the web? It is 6 seconds, one second shorter than that of a goldfish.…

With President Obama giving a speech in our home of Austin, TX this week, we became curious: how has his communication changed since he was first sworn in to office? After 5 years in office, is he more confident? Is he more optimistic? Is he more positive? What We Did To find out, we performed…

Background: In 2012, Facebook conducted a study to test how emotions affect people’s behavior. They filtered the news feeds for about 700,000 people for a one week period. Some people were shown fewer instances of positive posts, while others were shown fewer instances of negative posts. They found the emotions to be contagious: those that…

This time last year, we analyzed the top 10 patriotic speeches in American history to discover what made them distinctive. We found each speech to be highly emotional because of its patriotic content. Social psychology helps to explain why patriotism is so connected with emotions. People often identify themselves with their country. For many of…

There is no shortage of commentary and research telling us that men and women communicate differently. We have enjoyed reading some of the data-driven studies that examine the amount of time men speak relative to women (some studies claim that women say 3 times more words daily, others say there is no difference between men…

June 5, 2014 With confidence, you can reach truly amazing heights; without confidence, even the simplest accomplishments are beyond your grasp. -Jim Loehr Last January, we analyzed inspirational locker room speeches from the head coaches of the NFL teams that were facing off in the Super Bowl. We found the language of Pete Carroll, head…

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Mark Hirschey One of Warren Buffett’s key business principles states: “We will be candid in all our communications.” Given Warren Buffett’s immense success, you would think more CEOs would follow his lead, at least in candor. This got us thinking: how does Buffett’s communication style compare to that of other…