Have a Cup of Coffee While Reading This

According to a research by two Yale psychologists, John A. Bargh and Lawrence E. Williams, encountering warmth or cold lights up the insula — a walnut-sized section of the brain — and the insula is the same part of the brain engaged when we evaluate who we can trust in economic transactions. The physical sensation of warmth encourages emotional warmth, while a chilly drink in hand serves as a brake on rash decisions. Barth argues that,

One person's perceptions of another's "warmth" is a powerful determining factor in social relationships. Judging someone to be either "warm" or "cold" is a primary consideration, even trumping evidence that a "cold" person may be more competent. Much of this is rooted in very early childhood experience, when infants' conceptual sense of the world around them is shaped by physical sensations, particularly warmth and coldness.

The practical advice Bargh takes away from the study is that important decisions are best taken with a cold drink in hand, because that part of the brain that triggers caution in economic and trust decisions is stimulated by cold sensation. Conversely, if you are planning on introducing your fiancee to mom and dad, pass on the icy martinis in that air-conditioned, glass and steel restaurant; do it over a mug of hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire.

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Common Denominator of Facebook Users

According to a new study by doctoral candidate Aryn Karpinski of Ohio State University and her co-author Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University, college students who use Facebook, the 200-million-member social network, have one common denominator: they have significantly lower grade point averages (GPA) than those who do not.

The study found that the GPAs of Facebook users typically ranged a full grade lower than those of nonusers — 3.0 to 3.5 for users versus 3.5 to 4.0 for their non-networking peers.

Karpinski says she isn't surprised by her findings, but notes that the study does not suggest Facebook directly causes lower grades, merely that there's some relationship between the two factors. "Maybe Facebook users are just prone to distraction. Maybe they are just procrastinators," Karpinski told.

In February, Oxford University neuroscientist Susan Greenfield cautioned Britain's House of Lords that social networks like Facebook and Bebo were "infantilizing the brain into the state of small children," by shortening attention span and providing constant instant gratification.

New evidence by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a researcher at USC, shows the digital torrent of information from networking sites could have long-term damaging effects on the emotional development of young people's brains. Sites like Facebook and Twitter may blunt people's sense of morality and users could become "indifferent to human suffering" because they never get time to reflect and fully experience emotions about other people's feelings.

Some experts dismiss all studies of Internet use as flawed, since there is no reasonable way to control for the myriad variables that may affect such research.

Facebook also issued a statement and pointed to another study showing that personal Internet use at work can help focus workers' concentration and increase productivity.

Parents and employers are confused.