relationships

Everybody likes to operate in an environment of trust. When you deal with people you trust, things get done faster, stress is reduced and new opportunities open up. As E.M. Forster once wrote, “One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.”

This conversation follows on from an earlier conversation: Mazism 1: There Is Always A Price, It Is Always Paid. 

Just a few weeks ago, it seemed like Google Glass was the new “It” technology – a technology so cool that it was suddenly socially acceptable to show up with these augmented reality glasses at fashion events and even the Oscars.

Could having many connections on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook cause you to lose more weight than, say, running on a treadmill? The answer is… maybe.

Business agreements are usually secured by written agreements that define the obligations of the parties and state what happens under various conditions. Having been party to a few business deals launched based mostly on enthusiasm and trust, I can certainly vouch for the importance of such agreements. Not everyone relies entirely on extensive documentation, though – oilman T. Boone Pickens famously collected $3 billion when courts upheld his handshake deal to acquire a piece of Getty Oil. And, we find, there’s actually scientific evidence that stronger contracts can reduce trust.

These days, you can’t go online without bumping into someone styling himself as a social media guru, a Facebook expert, or a power user of Twitter. And, if you check their online profiles, they actually do have thousands of friends and followers. But are these real friends, or did the supposed expert socializers simply crank up an automation software to rapidly build their follower base? Surprisingly, how capable of being social a person is can be revealed by a brain scan.

A new study has found that individuals with larger amygdalas (an area of the brain usually associated with fear and other emotions) have more friends and more complex social networks.