Curiosity Daily

Employees Should Surf the Web at Work, Hear a 3,000-Year-Old Mummy’s Voice, and Being Cold Makes Us Crave Social Contact

Episode Summary

Learn about why bosses should let employees surf the web at work; how researchers made it possible for you to hear a mummy’s voice after 3,000 years; and why cold weather makes us crave social contact.

Episode Notes

Learn about why bosses should let employees surf the web at work; how researchers made it possible for you to hear a mummy’s voice after 3,000 years; and why cold weather makes us crave social contact.

Employees Should Surf the Web at Work by Kelsey Donk

Hear a 3,000-Year-Old Mummy’s Voice by Cameron Duke

Being Cold Makes Us Crave Social Contact by Steffie Drucker

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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/employees-should-surf-the-web-at-work-hear-a-3-000-year-old-mummys-voice-and-being-cold-makes-us-crave-social-contact

Episode Transcription

CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.

ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why bosses should let employees surf the web at work; how researchers made it possible for you to hear a mummy’s voice after 3,000 years; and why cold weather makes us crave social contact.

CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity. 

Why bosses should let employees surf the web at work (Cody)

As it turns out, you shouldn’t feel too guilty for checking Facebook at work. It’s also okay to do a bit of online shopping, or even watch a hilarious YouTube video or two. If you’re a supervisor, then don’t get mad at ME. Because new research suggests that managers should actually allow some time for internet browsing. Surfing the web can help employees cope with stress at work. 

In the United States, employees spend two hours a day doing stuff like scrolling through Instagram, emailing friends, shopping, or Googling random stuff. And all that so-called “cyberloafing” has a price. It reportedly costs businesses up to $85 billion every year. Which is why, of course, we’re trained to think of this kind of behavior as bad. And that’s why lots of workplaces have computer use policies and internet monitoring to discourage employees from surfing on the clock. I mean, anyone who’s ever had a job knows that you’re supposed to feel guilty for looking at your phone or scrolling through internet news at work, right?

But here’s the twist! According to new research, employees actually use cyberloafing as a way to cope with work stress. And it could lead to some unexpectedly positive benefits to a business’s bottom line. That probably sounds backward, but it’s true.

Researchers studied 258 workers to figure out why they cyberloaf and what it means about their work. They found that when employees are mistreated or unhappy with their jobs, cyberloafing can help them cope. In other words, when employees do a little bit of shopping at work, they report higher job satisfaction and want to quit less than those who stay focused all day long. 

The researchers say they don’t know how cyberloafing impacts productivity, but they think it could actually improve job performance. We know that taking breaks is helpful, so it makes sense that surfing the web could help with productivity, too. 

In the end, researchers say it’s up to managers to relax their rules on cyberloafing. While they’re at it, bosses should improve the work conditions that make people turn to the internet to start with. But mostly, you can cut yourself some slack. A little time on the web won’t hurt.  

Engineers replicated a mummy's vocal tracts (Ashley)

Thanks to science, a 3,000-year-old mummy got his voice back. You heard that right: researchers have found a way to rebuild a mummy’s vocal tract.

The mummy in question was an Egyptian priest named Nesyamun [NESS-ee-ah-MOON]. During his life, he chanted and sang in rituals at a temple in modern-day Luxor — and he was apparently pretty good at it. I mean, the phrase “True of Voice” is written in hieroglyphics next to his name on his sarcophagus. That’s where he had been for the last 3000 years or so until the early 1800s when his tomb was excavated. Today, he resides at the Leeds City Museum in the UK. Guests see him every day as part of the museum’s Egyptology exhibit, but soon they may also be able to hear him. 

But...why? Two reasons. One, a CT scan in 2016 showed that Nesyamun’s vocal tract was surprisingly intact, and was frankly too tempting NOT to 3D print. Two, the texts inscribed on his sarcophagus expressed his wishes for the ability to see and address the gods in death as he had in life — in essence, he wanted to be able to speak after his death. So the team got to work to give Nesyamun his voice back.

The researchers used the data from the CT scan to construct a computer model of the mummy’s mouth, throat, and sinuses. The next step was to 3-D print a replica, which they attached to a device that simulates human vocal cords. The result was a soft vowel sound, like this. [PLAY AUDIO CLIP] https://soundcloud.com/user-408688451/the-re-created-sound-of-nesyamun

Unfortunately, the mummy doesn’t actually speak. That’s because it doesn’t move, and movement is the key to speech. The human vocal tract is like a musical instrument: just like the same note sounds different coming out of a dainty classical guitar than a big acoustic guitar, the vibration of a person’s vocal cords sound different depending on the shape and position of their mouth, tongue, and vocal tract. Changing that shape is what produces different vowels and consonants. Nesyamun’s rebuilt vocal tract just has one position, but it still gives us an idea of his voice’s overall timbre [TAM-ber], or sound color. So after 3000 years of silence, his voice can be heard again.

Cold days can make us long for social contact, but warming up can help (Cody)

Here in Chicago, we’re smack dab in the middle of what the kids call “cuffing season.” That’s the time when single people notice the dropping temperatures and start to pair up so they have someone to spend the cold winter months with. Well, I’m here to tell you that this isn’t just a trend among the youths. Scientists have found that colder weather makes all of us crave social contact — and there’s something you can do about it.

Before I get to that, though, think about the benefits you get from being with someone you love. There’s a feeling of safety, calm, and attachment. But even more basic than that? Being physically close to someone makes you feel warm. And a new study published in Social Psychology shows that this association we have between warmth and social connection goes both ways. 

 

For the study, a pair of researchers stood on a busy university campus and stopped passersby to ask them their thoughts about a new product: a heated back wrap. They strapped the battery-powered wrap around 78 participants. For some, the wrap produced a mild heat, but for others, it was completely turned off. The team asked people to rate how pleasant they found the product, then asked how likely they were to do various social things over the next week, like calling a loved one or catching up with an old friend. Importantly, every day the team ran the experiment, they noted the temperature outside. That ranged from about 46 to 82 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 8 to 28 degrees Celsius — a nice variety of warm and chilly days.

 

Now, asking people what they’re going to do isn’t a reliable way to measure that — I mean, who knows if they’ll follow through. But the researchers didn’t care if the participants actually did what they said they would. They were really just interested in how the weather and the heat from the back wrap affected their answers.

 

More people reported plans to socialize over the coming week when it was a cold day and the back wrap wasn’t turned on, which suggests that being physically cold drives our desire for social contact. But even on colder days, if people felt the warmth of the back wrap, it quelled their need for social connection.

 

So if you’re feeling lonely this winter, you might feel better if you start a fire in the fireplace or draw a warm bath. Or, call up a friend. They’re probably feeling a little chilly themselves and could use the company.

RECAP

Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with

  1. Summary: "Recent research suggests that cyberloafing may have some unexpected positive workplace outcomes. Therefore, we argue that the role of workplace cyberloafing is more complex than previously assumed and posit that cyberloafing may provide employees with a way to cope with workplace stress such as exposure to workplace aggression. To examine this proposition, we used a heterogeneous sample of 258 employees to test whether cyberloafing buffers the detrimental effects of workplace aggression exposure on two outcome variables: employees’ turnover intentions and job satisfaction. Overall, results supported the notion that employees use cyberloafing as a workplace coping mechanism, which runs counter to the majority of research that conceptualizes cyberloafing as a counterproductive workplace behavior. These findings suggest that managers may consider allowing some degree of cyberloafing so that employees can better cope with work stress."
  2. Summary: Engineers were able to design and build a replica of a mummy‚Äôs vocal tract. This mummy, 3000 years old, was a priest named Nesyamu, meaning ‚ÄúTrue of Voice‚Äù. Thanks to 3d printing technology, this mummy can speak again. Using CT scans of soft tissues, they 3d printed the model and attached it to a synthesized larynx. While it can‚Äôt speak (It only produces vowel sounds), it gives us an idea of what this person may have sounded like in life. 
  3. Summary: Previous research has suggested that our awareness of being physically close to someone else is so tied up with perceptions of actual warmth that temperature affects our social perceptions into adulthood. But a lot of that research has failed to replicate, so it's not clear whether that link actually exists. Now a new paper not only supports the idea that our temperature does indeed affect our social judgments, but it gives an explanation for why previous research didn't pan out. These researchers realized that past studies didn't consider the ambient temperature when the research was done. In the new study, people reported a greater intention to socialize over the next week when asked on colder days, compared with warmer days -- but only if they weren't being mechanically warmed. The new findings “suggest that seemingly subtle changes in temperature can have important implications for the psychology of social affiliation, and such findings apply in real-world contexts outside the laboratory.

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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Kelsey Donk, Cameron Duke, and Steffie Drucker, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.

ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.

CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.

ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!