The Secret to Maintaining Sexual Desire?

How many pennies are in your jar?

Soon after I got engaged, a married friend told me about the Penny Game. In this game, a newlywed couple puts a penny in a jar each time they have sex during the first year of marriage. Then, starting the second year, the couple takes out a penny each time they have sex. Supposedly, the couple will never again have enough sex to empty the jar. This old wives' tale represents a commonly held belief that sexual desire declines over the course of a relationship. But is this true? And does it happen to everyone?

Sexual desire and sexual frequency do tend to decline over the course of a relationship. Several large-scale surveys have found evidence for this, and one study even found that the link between sexual frequency and relationship duration was stronger than the link between sexual frequency and age (Johnson et al., 1994). So young or old, sexual desire is likely to peak at the beginning of a new relationship and steadily decline from there.

But is that the end of the story? Once we enter into a long-term relationship, do we have to sit back and accept that our hottest days are behind us? According to recent research, not necessarily.

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Friday Fun: Mad Men With Power Moves

When Mad Men started it's final fifth season on AMC, I received a good laugh when I was alerted to the hashtag #draping. The lead character of Mad Men, Don Draper (Jon Hamm), is pictured in advertisements for the popular television show sitting on a couch with his hand draped over the back of the couch, holding either a cigarette or a cocktail. It appears that fans of the popular show have taken to posing in this fashion, and then posting to tumblr.

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The Body Problem: Why are we so afraid of bodily functions?

A Parody of "Everyone Poops"

The children's book Everyone Poops, which documents the pooping styles and sizes of a range of animals and a little boy, did not get the greatest critical reception. Publishers Weekly said: "Okay, so everyone does it–does everyone have to talk about it? True, kids... may find it riveting, but their parents may not want to read to them about it... Call it what you will, by euphemism or by expletive, poop by any name seems an unsuitable picture book subject." Don't ask, don't tell seems to be the dominant ideology when it comes to poop. According to one grateful reader, the book helped her child "realize that pooping was normal," which is great, but it also suggests that the default belief is that pooping is somehow abnormal and shameful.

It's not just poop that we're uncomfortable with. We're also uncomfortable with body hair, body fat, breast-feeding, puberty, periods, digestive sounds, nudity, and pretty much anything else that involves natural body processes. Even Adam and Eve felt compelled to cover themselves with fig leaves. Why are our bodies so embarrassing?

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Wow the Crowd with your Outstanding Presentation Skills!

Public speaking can be very stressful. It takes a lot of discipline, practice and preparation to pull off a good presentation. Becoming a competent, rather than just confident, speaker requires a lot of experience. Here are a few things you can do to start sharpening your presentation skills now:

1. Don’t Read- Go prepared, do your research and expect all sorts of questions.

2. Try making eye contact with each person in the room.

3. Engage the audience by asking them questions and by getting their opinion on specific subject matters.

4. Be Entertaining - Include appropriate humor, but make sure it doesn’t insult anyone.

An Inconvenient Truth: Race in America (Part I)

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It is an American tragedy whenever an unarmed teenage boy--of any color--is fatally shot. And when you strip down the Trayvon Martin shooting to its core, that is exactly what we were all faced with in Florida several weeks ago--a senseless tragedy. As a result, there has been a re-emergence of questions about the meaning of race in today's America. I will be taking on some of these tough questions in a series of blog posts I'm calling "An Inconvenient Truth." In this discussion of race in America, I will pull no punches.

One of the main talking points (but definitely not the only one) in the Trayvon Martin shooting, and in the eventual arrest of his killer, George Zimmerman, has been race. Did race play a role in Zimmerman's actions that day? Was Zimmerman unfairly judging Martin based on his skin color?  If Martin was of another racial/ethnic group, would the same things have happened? 

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Using Social Psychology to Stay Healthy

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Imagine the following scenario. You learn that a family member has been diagnosed with an illness. This illness has a genetic basis and as such, you could be at risk for it as well. There is, however, a screening for the genetic marker, and you can find out whether you are likely to develop this illness. Do you complete the screening or do avoid it?

Though few of us will face this specific scenario, many of us will face something similar. Heart disease runs in many families, as do certain forms of cancer, thyroid problems, etc. If your sibling or a grandparent suffered from one of these, would you get screened as well? What about common illnesses? Again, heart disease is among the top killers worldwide. Have you ever had your heart checked out?

Health screening is an important part of disease prevention and control. Agencies, such as The American Cancer Society or The American Heart Association provide clear guidelines for who should get screened, and when. Doctors are well aware of these guidelines and encourage patients to get screened. Early detection can often prevent or slow the course of a disease. Nevertheless, many people ignore screening recommendations. WHY?

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Want to know what happens to your CV once you upload it on Akhtaboot.com? Watch the Video!

Want to know what happens to your CV once you upload it on Akhtaboot.com? In a 3 minute explanatory video, Akhtaboot Jobs himself will take you on a behind-the-scenes tour to show you how Akhtaboot works!

Not a Morning Person?

Are you one of those people who really struggle to get out of bed in the morning? Most employees hate mornings and find a hard time waking up to a new day, every day! Becoming a morning person won’t happen overnight; it’s an ongoing process that takes time and dedication. Here are some tips that really work:

1. Try to go to bed earlier than you usually would; such an obvious tip but it makes all the difference. If you can't sleep right away, read a book or a magazine!

2. Set your alarm clock on the weekends as well! Keep your biological clock intact and make it a habit to wake up a bit earlier than you usually would on your days off.

3. If a cup of coffee is all you need after you wake up, then make sure to prepare all the ingredients the day before to help you kick-start a productive day.

4. Have your outfit prepared the night before. Have your laptop, keys, phone, and whatever you take with you all in one place, organized and prepared for you just to grab on your way out.

College Grads Lack Skills for Workplace?

Job seekers entering the real world without real skills?

Reprinted with permission of FayObserver.com







Grueling end-of-course tests, stressful finals and pomp and circumstance are over for this year's 3 million high school graduates across the country.



About 70 percent will go on to a two- or four-year college, while 30 percent will go directly into the job market. Many high school graduates who go to college also will hold a job. But does a high school diploma or proficiency on exams mean that graduates have the skills to succeed in the workplace?



A recent study by ACT, the renowned education testing and research organization, found that while school curriculum and tests are driven by state standards, those standards are not rigorous enough to ensure that students are ready for college or the work force. Furthermore, a study by a consortium of experts concluded that the future U.S. work force is woefully ill-prepared for the demands of the workplace.



The survey of more than 400 employers across the U.S. concluded that high school (and college) graduates need skills in the following areas to succeed in the workplace:



• Professional/work ethic

• Critical thinking/ problem solving

• Oral and written communication

• Team work/ collaboration



Yet, 70 percent of employers rated new entrants into the work force with high school diplomas as deficient in professional/work ethics as well as critical-thinking and problem-solving abilities. An astounding 81 percent of employers reported high school graduates deficient in written communication. Overall, more than 40 percent of the employers rated recent high school graduates as deficient in overall preparation for entry-level jobs.



Consequently, while proficiency in basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic is fundamental and should be attained prior to high school graduation, and while obtaining a diploma is certainly laudable, a diploma nonetheless does not guarantee success in the workplace. Far from it. In addition to knowing how to read, write and calculate, a high school student must possess the ability to apply those basic skills and knowledge to the real work environment.



The consortium study suggests that all stakeholders (business, educators and community members) should consider methods of enhancing workplace skills. Internships, summer jobs, work-study programs, job shadowing, mentoring, on-the-job training and other educational approaches that include real-world experiences or community involvement, provide opportunities for students to acquire basic knowledge and skills, while cultivating applied skills.



Indeed, the workplace is changing and demands a higher level of skill than ever before. The global economy and our national social and economic future depend on our ability to increase the percentage of students who are not only equipped with basic skills but who are equipped with the ability to parlay those skills into successful and productive work experiences.







Photo courtesy of Creative Commons

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pbinder/3580197607/

Call Me Crazy: The Subtle Power of Gaslighting

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Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over, but had me believing it was always something that I'd done, sings Kimbra in Gotye's "Somebody that I used to know." In psychology, this phenomenon is called "gaslighting," a term that has its origins in a 1938 play (and a 1940 film) called Gas Light, where a man leads his wife to believe that she is insane in order to steal from her. When she notices strange events, such as the gas light dimming that occurs when he turns on the lights in the attic to search for her collection of jewels, he tells her it's just her imagination. His goal is to remove her credibility so that her complaints can be attributed to her psychosis, rather than to his misdeeds. Gaslighting is now used to refer to any attempt to make another person doubt their sense of reality.

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What Job Hunters Can Learn From Unemployed Actors

Some personal job search advice

A guest post by Rebekah Cockrell



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Every day I look out at the internet and see my friends saying the same thing..”I’m tired of job hunting”. And my response is, “you should be tired”. If you’re not tired of job hunting, you’re not trying hard enough. It’s a tough economy to be looking for employment. But don’t get discouraged. There are jobs out there. You need to just keep at it. Which brings us into our topic for the article…. What can job hunters learn from unemployed actors?



Lesson Number One: It’s all about being seen.



If you’re sitting at home in your PINK sweats watching The Hills entire last season while your roommate is out in her best suit going to networking meetings and social functions, it’s not going to be tough to guess who is going to find a job first. You need to be out there, letting people know you’re ready and looking for employment. Actors do the same thing. When they are out of work, they take meetings, hit parties and network with people who could hire them. It’s not the time for them to be hanging out at home in their sweats eating gummi bears. Instead they make sure they always look their best and that other’s see them. Ok, so some of you aren’t the greatest at face to face networking. Good thing that in today’s world you can network online. Get a Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn account. Post a really great picture of yourself and start introducing yourself to people. Remember there is no shame in letting people know you’re looking for a job.



Lesson Number Two: No role is too small to get started.



Brad Pitt was in a Pringles commercial. Keanu Reeves, a CornFlakes commercial. George Clooney, Return of the Killer Tomatoes movie. Of course we all know where these guys ended up. The term, uber-successful isn’t even going to cover it. Experience is sometimes key. And if you need to get experience by taking a job that maybe you wouldn’t normally consider, it’s O.K. All successful people started somewhere. Most people aren’t born successful. They work at it. And you need to as well. Eventually your time will come. The second lesson here, is that if you aren’t getting the job offers you desire, sometimes you just got to take what you can get. It doesn’t mean you should give up on your dream job, there is plenty of time in the day to keep looking. But it’s a heck of a lot easier to keep looking if your internet is still working and the lights stay on.





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Rue and Racism: Intergroup dynamics and the Hunger Games

 Today we have the second installment of awesome guest blogger Maya Kuehn's posts on the psychology behind the Hunger Games. Check out the first installment here.

Rue

In the original, written version of The Hunger Games, it’s made fairly clear that both Rue and her fellow District 11 tribute, Thresh, are African American. Yet when faced with their ethnicity on the movie screen, many people have expressed great disappointment (to state it delicately) over these tragic characters not being White. But why?

Well, it turns out that empathy across group boundaries is a complicated matter. Although part of the glue holding society together is a desire to reduce the suffering of others, and though we’re quick to empathize with and help members of our own groups, this dynamic can go haywire when it must extend to members of different groups (Cikara, Bruneau, & Saxe, 2011).
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Strange Interview Questions: Akhtaboot Hashtag Campaign on Twitter Concludes

As if job interviews aren’t tough enough, hiring managers nowadays are going for weird and hard to answer interview questions that can put an A-lister in the hot seat. To being with, you must keep in mind that many of the toughest interview questions don’t necessarily have right and wrong answers. The real purpose of such questions is to find out more about the true personality of candidates when put under pressure and how they form decisions when faced with tough situations.

If candidates knew the exact questions to be asked in a job interview, they will rehearse beforehand, preventing their true personality from coming out. As a result, employers won’t be able to compare candidates based on certain personality traits.

Strange interview questions can reveal a lot about you as a job seeker, will you panic? Get angry? Give up? No matter what an interviewer expects to learn from such questions, no one wants to hire someone who is easily irritated, has no opinion or who is a quitter.

We decided to ask our @akhtaboot followers on Twitter what is the strangest job interview question they have ever faced. Here are some of the most interesting - yet weird – questions provided by our dear followers:

“Are you an only child?”
“Do you think we should mourn Saddam?”
“Would you spend your lunch break with your boyfriend?”
“What do you think about loving a woman?”
“What picture do you have hung above your bed?”
“If you were a tree,what kind of tree would you be?”

Job seekers need to understand the kind of analytical skills being sought by hiring companies. Think out of the box, be creative, organize your thoughts in a logical manner and never let your fear overcome your true identity. Just remember that the interviewer is just trying to find out how quickly you can think and how you stand up before stress or pressure.

Learn How to Manage Job Stress

The ability to manage stress in the workplace can not only improve your physical and emotional health, it can also make the difference between success and failure on the job. Being stressed can have a great impact on the quality of your interactions with your colleagues, boss, family and friends. The better you are at managing your own stress level, the more you'll be able to positively affect those around you:

1. Take responsibility for improving your physical and emotional well-being.

2. Avoid people with negative attitudes. Surround yourself with people who are enthusiastic and hard workers.

3. Revive the great lost art of conversation; improve your communication skills to enhance your relationship with your coworkers and boss.

Mind Games: The Psychology of the Hunger Games

Guest blogger Maya Kuehn is back with a two-part post on the psychology of the Hunger Games. So sit back and enjoy another round of “at the movies with a psychologist.”

Watching The Hunger Games come to life on screen (at, full disclosure, a midnight show), I found that actually witnessing the slaughter of several teenagers was more gut-wrenchingly graphic than it had seemed in the books. So when (PYM blogger and fellow social psychologist) Amie asked me whether the movie was gruesome, I had to admit it was. But because I can’t resist translating my bizarrely specific psychological know-how to daily advice, I encouraged her to use her favorite emotion regulation strategy while viewing the more horrifying scenes. Just what does this mean, and what other aspects of The Hunger Games could social psychology address? Allow me to elaborate. 

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Friday Fun: It's all an illusion

As our eyes glance over the world around us we are able to quickly grasp a 3-D image of our environment. But can we always trust what we see? Just as we have mental shortcuts, we also have visual shortcuts that help us quickly take in the world around us. Sometimes though, those shortcuts can lead us astray. And when they do, its entertaining. So for today's Friday Fun, I thought I'd share a few of the more famous visual illusions that I learned about in my Sensation and Perception class. Try them for yourselves and see if you fall prey to your visual system!

Young Girl-Old Woman

Do you see an old woman or a young lady? 

Can you switch back and forth between them? 

Hint - the young woman's nose is the old woman's eye. The young woman's jaw is the old woman's nose.

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BUiD’s BizQuiz 2012 1st Inter-Collegiate Business Quiz Competition -ICBQ 2012

The British University in Dubai’s Faculty of Business is organizing the first intercollegiate business quiz competition for University and College students in the UAE. The objective of the event is to create a fun-filled atmosphere for learning and acquiring knowledge for University students. It is fervently hoped that the event will motivate students to bring themselves up to date with the latest news and other emerging developments in the following areas; Business, Economics Marketing, Accounting and Finance, Technology, Business History, Management Thinkers and UAE Economy.

Number of Teams: University students within a University or three students of different Universities can form teams. Only three members are allowed in a team but no restrictions on number of teams colleges or universities can depute to participate at the event. Only students pursuing their undergraduate courses are eligible to participate in the competition. Students will have to produce their student ID’s on the event day. BUID will hold a paper based multiple choice test to all teams as an elimination round. Only five teams will be chosen to compete for the final round. The elimination round will be a paper based MCQs of 30 minutes duration and would consist of 30 Questions.

Quiz Master: Dr Elango Rengasamy – Head of Finance and Banking Programme- The British University in Dubai.

Final Round: The Top 5 teams from the written preliminary will feature in the Final round. The Finals would consist of 10 to 14 rounds, which include Audio, Video, Image, Rapid-Fire and Clue-based rounds. The Questions could be drawn from the following domains: Marketing, Accounting & Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Current Affairs (Business / Economic) – Local, Regional & Global, Business History, Management Thinkers and UAE economy.

Prizes: BUiD will award trophies to the winning team and two runners up team. It will also try and arrange for Airline tickets, laptops, mobile phones, BUiD’s merchandise etc to the winners and runner up teams and if possible for all the participating teams’ .There will be onsite instant prozes for audience from the sponsors/partners at the event.

Sample Questions:

1. Which company's tag line is 'Yours Is Here'?
2. Apart from water, what is the most widely consumed drink in the World? Coffee, Tea or Coca-Cola?
3. What is the first product of Sony?
4. It is made from thermo-plastic paper and the manilla hemp used to make rope, it is designed to withstand boiling water, what is it?
5. What do you understand from the abbreviation? “PIIGS”

Key:

1. Dell Computers
2. Tea
3. Sony Rice Cooker
4. Tea Bag
5. PIIGS stands for economically weaker Euro zone nations currently facing downturn. (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain)

Register your Team NOW!

How to survive a break-up: Give yourself a break

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There is no shortage of advice on how to recover from a bad break-up: keep busy, don't contact your ex, go out with friends, make a break-up mix (preferably one that includes "I will survive"), etc. But according to a new study, something important is missing from this list.

In the study, led by David Sbarra and published in Psychological Science, participants who had recently separated from their spouses were recorded talking for four minutes in a stream-of-consciousness format about the separation. Then four judges rated the extent to which these statements included evidence of self-compassion, which involves treating yourself with kindness and understanding rather than beating yourself up when things go wrong.

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Being a Great Leader

Some people believe that leaders are born with the necessary qualities that make them successful as leaders. While others believe that leadership, like many other similar characteristics, can be learned and developed through life. We at Akhtaboot believe that it’s a mix of both. That being said, one fact remains the same; you should work hard to become a great leader. Below are some tips to help you improve your leadership skills:

1. Work on improving your communication skills and abilities, especially your ability to listen to others.

2. Be willing to take risks.

3. Focus on working and living with integrity and respect for others.

4. Have confidence in yourself and in your abilities.

Genes and the Power of the Situation

Today on PYM, I thought it would be a good idea to reach back into our archives to find a post on the Nature v. Nurture debate. In this post, I considered how the situation in which you were raised determines how much your genes influence your intelligence.

Do you know this man? (source)

Most people don't know Kurt Lewin, and I think that is a travesty of epic proportions. In the ivory tower of the academy (where most researchers live), he is considered to be the father of modern social psychology. His theories inspired the classic research of the last century, and his principles of social psychology still govern the way researchers design experiments today.

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