Are the Well Read More Likely to Succeed?

By: Alexandria Addesso

With television, movies, and the internet to entertain us many have been reading less and less. So much information can now be attained in small sound bites or social media posts, which often leaves large knowledge filled tomes on the shelf. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, “reading has declined among every group of adult Americans,” and for the first time in American history, “less than half of the United States adult American population is reading literature.” But could this trend be detrimental? How important is reading and how does it affect a person’s chances at achieving success in their lifetime?



Studies done at The New School, a New York City private University found that reading is crucial for socialization especially in children. Researchers also found evidence that literary fiction improves a reader’s capacity to understand what others are thinking and feeling. In one study done by the university and published in Science, participants read non-fiction/nothing, popular fiction, or literary fiction then were tested on their ability to understand other people’s thoughts and emotions. Participants that read non-fiction/nothing showed unimpressive results. When they read excerpts of popular fiction their test results were dually insignificant. But, when they read literary fiction their test results improved vastly and so did their capacity for empathy.

Reading is also the key for those who want to be leaders or chief executive officers (CEO). Reading in general has shown to increases verbal intelligence, making a leader a more adept as well as a more articulate communicator. Being that reading is a form of leisurely recreation, it has been shown to be a good stress reliever which overall leads to a more peaceful work environment. Some very well read successful people include Steve Jobs the founder of Apple, Phil Knight the founder of Nike, and Winston Churchill who won the Nobel Prize for Literature.



Currently about 60 million Americans suffer from some form of a sleep disorder. A lack of sleep can negatively affect a person’s mental, physical, and emotional well-being. Sleep experts often recommend establishing a regular de-stressing routine before bed to calm your mind and ready your body for rest. Reading is one of the top strategies recommended to add to your routine right before going to sleep. Bright lights from electronic devices signal the brain to wake up, whereas reading a book under a dim light can tell your system to do the inverse.

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The Effects of Advertising on the Brain

By: Alexandria Addesso

Everywhere you turn someone is trying to solicit you for something. On television, the internet, radio, newspapers, billboards and street corners. In big cities such as New York and Los Angeles it is not unlikely to see a whole side of a sprawling high-rise or even sky-skraper be covered in an advertisement. For a capitalist society advertising is the life sustaining blood that keeps consumption going. But could there be more negative side effects from advertising than just an influx of consumerism and slimmer wallets? Could advertising be neurologically affecting the consumer?



Some advertisements grab the viewer or listener via appealing to their sense of reason by stating facts, this method of advertising is called “logical persuasion”. The other type of advertising method is called “non-rational influence” because it may use scenarios that have little to nothing to do with the product but instead depicts instances of fun, pleasure, or sexual appeal.

The brain responds differently to the two types of advertising. A study was done by the University of California in conjunction with the George Washington University in which participants were shown 24 print ads, half were logical persuasion advertising and the other half were non-rational influence. Participants had electrodes attached to different parts of their heads so that researchers could perform an electroencephalogram (EEG) test and watch their brain activity while the ads were viewed. Researchers found that there was much more activity in the orbitofrontal, anterior cingulate regions, the amygdala, and the hippocampus, which are all sections of the brain that deal with emotional processing and decision making, when logical persuasion ads were viewed rather than non-rational influence ads which showed little to none. Meaning that individuals are more likely to resist logical persuasion advertising than non-rational influence advertising because, the latter deals more with the appeal to the subconscious.



Another study was done at the University of North Carolina that focused specifically on the neurological effects of deceptive advertising. In the study participants were shown three different print ads deemed: “highly believable”, “highly deceptive”, and “moderately deceptive” while functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was utilized to capture images of the brain.

It was uncovered that there is more brain activity occurring when participants viewed moderately deceptive ads, thus making them more frequently believe moderately deceptive advertisement.



The only way to keep from the seductive draw of advertisements is to avoid them
completely. But unless you are completely off-the-grid or blind, dumb, and deaf, this is
nearly impossible to do. The best thing that can be done is to train your brain to become
completely disinterested to any form of conscious solicitation, because unfortunately,
subconscious resistance is nearly impossible.

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