More Benefits for Green Companies

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The participants of one group wrote an essay about the emotions they experienced when thinking about their own death and what they would physically experience when dying, while the other group wrote about undergoing some sort of medical procedure.

Afterward, the participants in both groups chose items they would buy from a prepared grocery list that included essential and nonessential products. Those who had written about their own mortality chose to buy significantly more items than those who wrote about the medical procedure. They also bought more nonessential items. In another study, the researchers had participants eat cookies for a fictitious taste test after writing the various essays, and those with death on the brain ate significantly more cookies.

Participants who had low self-esteem binged more after contemplating death than those with high self-esteem, according to the study. Smeesters says the discoveries he and his partner made teach consumers more of a lesson than they do companies. "People are not aware of what affects their behavior," he says, adding that people might consider refraining from watching the evening news over dinner, lest they overeat.

Hiring on a Handshake

A firm handshake might be the difference between getting the job and not getting it, according to a recent study from the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business that is scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology. With an interest in finding out what happens in a job interview and why an interviewer decides early on whether to hire a person, Greg L. Stewart, professor of management at Tippie, had 98 students come in for mock interviews with real employers.

Without telling the students, he had the interviewers evaluate their handshakes. He had them rate the quality of the handshake independent of the job interview and then analyzed the relationship between the two. Those with firm handshakes were more likely to get the job.

What Stewart confirmed was that handshakes matter. "I don't think people necessarily remember the handshake," says Stewart. "I think it's a good signal of other things." He adds that extroverted people were more likely to have firm handshakes.

In addition, women, on average, have less firm handshakes than men, but they do as well or better in interviews. Therefore, says Stewart, women who have a firm handshake get more out of it than men in the job interview.

The lesson for all job hunters is to work on your handshake (BusinessWeek.com, 6/28/05) and other social skills, says Stewart. His research is now focusing on what drives initial impressions in interviews.

Di Meglio is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in Fort Lee, N.J.