Hidden Meanings of gestures

Hidden Meanings

Watch what you say! A simple hand gesture could land you in a world of trouble. Here the thumbs up sign means "good going! " But in Bangladesh it's a taunt, and in other Islamic countries, it's the equivalent of an upraised middle finger. Finger Beckoning. Here we sometimes hail a waiter with index finger slightly raised and thumb loosely extended. In Japan it's rude to beckon a waiter if you motion with the index finger. And in Germany the waiter might well respond by bringing you two more drinks. "V" for Victory. It can mean "victory" or "peace," but in Britain if the palm faces inward, it's a taunt, especially if executed with an upward jerk of the fingers. As the story goes, over 650 years ago, the French disabled the English archers they captured in battle by cutting off their middle and index fingers. After the battles of Agincourt and Crecy, where the French were heavily defeated, the triumphant English gloated over their French prisoners by holding up their hands, first two fingers upright, palm inward, to show both fingers fully intact. Hands in Pockets. Think you can save yourself a load of trouble by shoving your hands in your pockets? Think again. Keeping one's hands in one's pockets while conversing is impolite in Indonesia, France and Japan.  Tapping Forehead With Fore-finger. It may mean "smart," but in Holland, tapping the centre of the forehead means "he's crazy." In Argentina our sign for "he's crazy" (circling a forefinger next to the ear) could be confused with their signal for "You have a telephone call." The A-Okay. Joining the thumb and index finger in a circle is an insult in many Latin American countries. When Richard Nixon was vice president, he is reported to have greeted a crowd south of the U.S. border with a double A-Okay sign. Imagine the reaction! A Frenchman reads the A-Okay gesture as meaning "zero" or "worthless." Stop Sign. Extending one hand, palm forward, means "stop!" right? In Greece it's the moutza, or hand push, which is a common sign of confrontation. And in West Africa the gesture is even more insulting than the upraised middle finger. Hook 'Em Horns. The pinkie and index finger raised up and the two middle fingers folded down is beloved of fans of the University of Texas Longhorns, but in parts of Africa this is a curse. And for millions of Italians it is the cornuto, signalling "Your spouse is being unfaithful." Yet in Hawaii raising the pinkie and thumb means "hang loose."

DIFFERENT MEANINGS

In Japan, you nod your head in agreement; your host smiles and thinks you're paying attention. In Egypt, you shake your head in disagreement; your host frowns and wonders why you don't understand. In Mexico, don't call her senora, which can imply aging; call her senorita. In Zimbabwe, don't ask, "Is it far?"; out of courtesy people will answer, "Not far." (Be specific and ask, "How long does it take by foot?") <> Beware what you offer your host. Pass up chrysanthemums in Argentina and Balkan (they denote funerals), clocks in China (the written characters resemble those for death) and red pens in South Korea (red ink conveys unfriendliness).  In Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries, eat and drink with your right hand; the left is considered unclean. Your mother was right. Don't point. But if in Singapore you must, use your thumb, not your forefinger, lest it be taken as an insult or obscenity. In Malaysia, curling the index finger is considered very rude. Scratching the air would be preferable for calling over a waiter. In Russia, don't shake hands across a threshold; it might invite bad luck. In Buddhist lands like Burma, don't pat a child on the head; it's the spiritually highest part of the body.

Have you hugged anyone lately?

You may laugh off the predilection of the psychiatry community in the USA for coining names such as dance or walk therapies, which are based, on pure common sense or on practices that have always been around in various cultures. But then you may feel like giving them a hug. For by calling it a therapy, giving it a name, and ardently promoting it, they often manage to create awareness about a healthy and wholesome habit that is endangered by the bustle of modern life. Hug therapy is a typical example.

Big deal, you say, when you hear the term for the first time. But try to recollect the last time you hugged somebody or somebody hugged you. In all likelihood, it was too long ago. Worse, the answer may be 'never' if you are the kind who flinches from physical contact.

So what are we missing out on?

Reaching out and touching someone, and holding him tight—is a way of saying you care. Its effects are immediate: for both, the hugger and the person being hugged, feel good. Touch is an important component of attachment as it creates bonds between two individuals. Hugging is simply a natural expression of showing that you love and care.

"Cuddling and caressing make the growing child feel secure and is known to aid in self-esteem," agrees Dr Bhagat, a psychiatrist. The tactile sense is all-important in infants. A baby recognizes its parents initially by touch. Malkani points out cultural variations pertaining to hugging: in the West, hugging a friend of the opposite sex is common, while in the East you see more physical contact between friends of the same sex.

Hugging comes naturally to Kajal Basu,a journalist. "It loosens you up and breaks the bonds of body as well as of society. The more ritualistic ways of greeting people, handshakes and namastes, are designed to keep us apart rather than bring us together," he argues.

R. Chandran, a reiki master based in Mumbai, India, says that hugging is a tool of transformation. "Hugging brings people closer to each other. If your relationship with somebody is not working, try hugging him 20 times a day and there will be a significant difference," he guarantees. Comparing hugging to reiki , the currently popular touch therapy based on the transfer of energy, he says the area of touch is much larger in the case of hugging and the contact is much more intimate, so the effects are subtler.

Touch has come full circle in the West this century. Time was when parents and hospitals were advised to leave a crying baby alone. Today the pediatricians and psychologists tell us to pick up and cuddle our children. Toys, even teddy bears, whose use has been increasing in the recent decades, are a poor substitute for the human contact needed by children.

Hugging is being used even as an aid in treating some physical illnesses, following research that it leads to certain positive physiological changes. For example, touch stimulates nerve endings, thereby helping in relieving pain . It is thus not uncommon for a chronic pain patient to be prescribed "Therapeutic touch" which involves placing the hands on or just above the troubled area in the patient's body for half-an-hour (shades of reiki). This pushes up the hemoglobin levels in the blood, increasing the delivery of blood to tissues, a study at the nursing department of New York University showed. Some nurses' associations in the USA have since endorsed therapeutic touch.

Any health problem makes the sufferer feel vulnerable, frightened, angry, frustrated and helpless. The patient usually needs to educate himself to make certain life changes. Hugging can give him the positive emotional state necessary to make these changes. In one study, pet ownership was seen to contribute to the survival of heart patients. The inference: the cuddling of pets has a soothing effect that reduces the stress levels in heart attack victims. 

 START HUGGING SOMEONE TODAY! =)

Who can you trust? Who do you believe in?

Are the people around you Unreliable? He/she can be your friend, staff or boss.
With these tips, you will never look at people the same way again. 

 

Stay away from people who have the following characteristics:

1. Continually touching his/her mouth unintentionally = liar. 
2. When he/she smiles, his/her mouth becomes uneven = cannot keep promise.
3. Sharp ear like Peter Pan = wicked hearted.
4. Sharp pointed nose = calculative and immoral person.
5. No eyebrow = Man is the only living thing that has eyebrows. If the person is without any eyebrow, he/she is clever but cunning.
6. Exposed jaw bone underneath the ear = no sense of gratitude.
7. Normally, people without pearl earlobes are ruthless people. They are unable to agree to you easily.
8. Protruding bones above the eyebrows = very demanding of themselves and they are very strong opinionated. If the bones are too protruding, the person is very short tempered.
9. Crooked nose = cunning and dishonest man.
10. If lips are too thin, he/she loves to tell lie.
11. Triangular eyes = want to take advantages from others. A lot of criminals have these eyes.
12. When he/she talks, the movement of his/her hands is significant = short tempered.
13. When he/she talks, he/she likes to hold his/her hands together and move about = cunning.
14. Upper part of the body is longer than the bottom part = lazy.
15. Eyebrows are too thick and too black = arrogant and short tempered.
16. If the cheeks of your staff are very high, be careful. He/she will overrule you one day. Cheek represents will-power.
17. Big mouth and cannot close firmly when he/she is not talking = liar.
18. Small mouth with thin lips = irresponsible man.
19. Bony face without much meat = immoral.
20. When he/she talks, you can only see his/her teeth at the bottom = liar. A lot of politicians have this type of mouth.
21. A lot of gaps in between the teeth = liar. Also, this type of people cannot save much money.
22. He/she cannot see eye to eye with you when you talk to him/her = liar.
23. Uneven teeth = liar.

*It may not be always right, it's just for your reference.

Go for Change! Go for Social Entrepreneurship!

Social entrepreneurship is, fundamentally, about using a market-driven business model to address key social and environmental issues. It is an emerging field with diverse and shifting interpretations.

Today, nonprofits are increasingly finding that social entrepreneurship offers the tools and

techniques needed to build capacity and to achieve and maintain long-term financial stability

during times where there are changes in the economic environment. Social entrepreneurship

is a strategic approach that encourages nonprofit corporations to both diversify revenue sources and develop new revenue-generating activities. Through social entrepreneurship, nonprofits across the country are developing new, innovative strategies for meeting their missions by adopting effective business practices that are the backbone of traditional business principles. Foundations that recognize the value of the trend are offering specialized grant and loan funds targeted at enterprise-oriented activities. Nonprofits practicing social entrepreneurship use business-sector disciplines and models within the core mission or program of the organization. For today’s nonprofit executive, the management challenge is to allocate resources strategically and make those resources as productive as possible. Executives find they are able to meet their missions through many different strategies—often using new financial and marketing models—than in the past. Social entrepreneurship can mean starting new endeavors or bringing new fiscal or managerial disciplines to old endeavors.

Social entrepreneurship helps nonprofits to:

● Increase efficiency in all areas

● Conduct rigorous financial planning as a core activity— combining resource development with financial planning strategies

● Develop creative organizational structures and alliances

● Think strategically about competition and collaboration

● Evaluate the need for changes in the nature and skills of internal staff

● Review the need for changes in the nature and skills of the board of directors

● Identify new earned income opportunities that are aligned with mission

● Redefine mission in the context of market research

Why Social Enterprise matters? 

• Social enterprise matters because it is focused on making positive change at a time when we desperately need it. Social enterprise is one important tool, among many, that is actively and directly making our world a better place.

• Social enterprise is more responsive. Social enterprise doesn't rely on the shifting priorities of government and major foundations; it gets on with making the change that is needed within a community and (sometimes) grows to affect whole cities, countries, and regions.

• Social enterprise is scalable. Like all businesses, social enterprise has, with investment and sales revenue, the ability to grow to meet needs and priorities of the communities it serves, as opposed to traditional nonprofit programs, which are often limited to the funds available from government and philanthropic funders.

• Social enterprise actively engages stakeholders. Social enterprise gives the people it helps a direct voice in the operation of the business - as owners, employees and paying customers.

Language of Social Entrepreneurship

If corporate leaders and their acolytes are

not slaves to some meritorious social 

purpose, they run the risk of being 

enslaved by their own ignoble appetites.

That's not some radical preacher or ranting Marxist, that's not even Bob Dylan in his early electric phase -- it's Gary Hamel, business consultant and author of "The Future of Management,"

Hamel titled his post The Hole in the Soul of Business --and proposed that "humanizing the language and practice of management is a business imperative (as well as a moral duty)".

What was that all about? I'd say them's fightin' words!

Apparently, polls Hamel had read suggested that "only 20% of employees are truly engaged in their work -- heart and soul", and that depressed him. It depressed him to the point where he thought about it creatively, and came up with a simple experiment.

He took a look at corporate annual reports, mission statements, and CEOs blog posts, and found plenty of talk about "superiority, advantage, leadership, differentiation, value, focus, discipline, accountability, and efficiency" – but not much mention of "beauty, truth, wisdom, justice, charity, fidelity, joy, courage and honor". Which he guessed were the values that people like Michelangelo, Galileo, Jefferson, and Gandhi were passionate about.

So, he thought, no wonder so many people in the workplace aren't terribly enthused about their work… Here are some more of his thoughts on the subject:

There was a time when Disney was in the joy business. … Apple is in the beauty business. … There are many within Google who believe their company is in the wisdom business.

John Mackey, the co-founder of Whole Foods Markets, once remarked that he wanted to build a company based on love instead of fear.

A gut-level commitment to building an organization infused with the spirit of charity is far more radical and weird than it might appear.

Given all this, why is the language of business so sterile, so uninspiring and so relentlessly banal? Is it because business is the province of engineers and economists rather than artists and theologians? 


Is it because the emphasis on rationality and pragmatism squashes idealism? I’m not sure. But I know this -- customers, investors, taxpayers and policymakers believe there’s a hole in the soul of 
business.

If Gary Hamel is right – and reading his piece, I have to say I found myself nodding and grinning a lot – there are really three things we can do.

We can model ourselves on Galileo or Gandhi and get out of the business of business altogether, we can find a business with heart, or we can build one. Social entrepreneurs, I imagine, will mostly favor the third option.

But let's think about this business of language, too. Let's ask some questions. Here are some that Hamel himself proposes:

• Why are words like "love", "devotion" and "honor" so seldom heard within the halls of corporate-dom?
• What values are in the driver’s seat?
• Why are the ideals that matter most to human beings the ones that are most notably absent in managerial discourse?
• Why do you believe the language of beauty, love, justice and service is so notably absent in the corporate realm? And what would you do to remedy that fact?

And here are some questions of my own, that Hamel's piece sparked in me:

• What about our own language, as social entrepreneurs?
• Does social enterprise already offer a business language that's expressive of care and concern?
• Come to that, does the word "social" really say what we want it to say?

Words matter – I think that's part of the issue that Hamel is trying to bring to our attention. But there are even bigger questions lurking behind those ones, I think -- and I'm inviting you to think about them out loud with me over the course of this event…

• Why and when did work get so bland, so detached from our more profound values?
• As social entrepreneurs, are we still a minority interest swimming against the tide – or the new tide just coming in, bringing those values back? ..hmm..

We are not only writers, We Are Designers of our Lives!

First off, credit due where credit is due. This journal was inspired by something I read in a Writers Digest Magazine. The Author Fred White discussed how to bring out your inner inspirations for writing, and I thought the same could apply to any art form.

The bottom point of his article was: Writers (Artists as well) don't wait to be inspired. It is possible to draw without inspiration. It's also possible to draw without creativity. 

My take: You can have amazing drawing skills and still not be very creative. But where is the fun in that? Face it, creativity and motivation are like chocolate and milk, separated they are neat, but together they make a cup of awesome. So bottom line is, it's worth it to try and be more creative when doing artwork.

Chapter 1: Inspiration: Your friend or enemy? 

Show of hands, who here got into drawing because of another person’s work? I know I did. Inspiration can be a wonderful, uplifting thing that motivates you to draw. When you lack motivation to draw, turn to your favorite artists! They can give you some amazing focus. What aspects do you like about their work? Their style? Content? Coloring?

But there can be a down side to that. Too much inspiration will cause you to shadow them. Sure, no one person can own a style, but do you really want to mimic them, or be your own person? Another tip is to talk to the artist you admire. The worst thing they will do is ignore you. I get ignored a lot. But sometimes they talk to me. You can talk to them about where they get inspiration, to try and help get YOU on the right creative path. 


Chapter 2: Senses and your creativity. 

As an artist, the most important sense to you is your sight (at least most of the time). But don’t just get stuck on that one sense! You have four other senses that can help you develop your creativity. Music is probably the next largest inspiration. Anyone else imagine when they listen to music? Anyone else picture their characters in some cheesy music video? In a cartoon? Doing epic things? Yes, music can dance a beautiful waltz with your mind. But don’t ignore those images you see when you listen to music! Write them down, what you see, how you feel, and try to portray them in your pictures. Music is drawing those images, thoughts, feelings, from a part of your mind that you can’t access easily without incentive. Movies and books can also be a great inspiration. I bet a few of you watch movies and get some awesome ideas pushing their way into your mind as you watch them. 


Chapter 3: When dreams become reality. 

Do you ever lie in bed at night, and ideas just seem to pop into your head? More so than during the day? Especially if you’ve been drawing/writing? There is a reason for that. You have many different levels of conscious thought. Basically, right now you are thinking of things that you don’t even know you are thinking of. Oh yes! Just like Music also helps release these thoughts, as mentioned above, resting the mind can draw them out as well. 

Meditation: freeing your mind from thought helps those dormant creative ideas to break lose. No, meditation doesn’t mean sitting in the middle of the floor cross-legged and chanting. It just means concentrating on something you wouldn’t normally concentrate on. If you push away all the common thoughts: TV, what you have to buy at the store, work, friends, future projects, you clear your mind for thoughts that might not be as pressing. But it’s in those thoughts that you draw out past events or experiences, images or ideas that got pushed into the back of your mind that might inspire you. The way a character looks, an idea for composition.

What you need to do now is build on those thoughts. The more creative ideas you get on paper, the more your creativity will grow, making NEW ideas bloom! 


Chapter 4: Who, what, when, where, why? HOW??! 


If you have original characters, I bet you have some kind of special connection to them. Play out their life in your head. Sit down and picture YOU are your character. Where do they live? What hobbies do they have? What conflicts do they share? How would your character react to everyday problems you face? Refer back to Chapter 2, get inside their head, what they smell, feel, see... do they live in a fantasy world? What makes it so different from our world? Scribble all this down. Try looking at things in OUR world and give them a twist. 

Let’s do a simple test: how does your character get around? No, not in a sexual way, I mean transportation. Dirty, dirty minds you people have. 

In the real world, people where I live drive cars.

They do not have cars in my character’s world.

So how do they get around? In a fantasy world, many people might say “my character flies around on a dragon. That’s good, but let’s try something different. Giant wolves? Nah. How about bugs? 

Yeah! 

Giant centipedes, now that’s fun. But let’s draw on a little saddle for them. And let’s research different bugs and combine different elements of several bugs to make new species! How would this affect the streets where my characters live? Would they have to wear special clothing if some bugs were slimy? What about flying bugs, would the rider’s outfits change to compensate for wind? What if the bugs are intelligent? Do my characters hire the bugs for a price? 

So, taking one idea and developing it snaps your creativity into action. 

My most favorite thing to do is look up many different species and try to combine their anatomy to make a unique character. 

Environments can be done in the same way.

RESEARCH is the key to character, environment, etc. development. Who, what, when, where, why. Use what you got! Use what you know. 

The world is a beautiful place, you just have to know where to look. With the internet it makes it all the more easy. 

Chapter 5: stick to it. 

I like fantasy art, so I mostly do fantasy art. It’s good to have variety, but when you’re a growing artist it’s also good to focus on something, to build up one idea enough that creativity comes naturally and your world fits together without feeling awkward. I am still trying to develop worlds, and I find focus is helping, but I have a loooong way to go. I often find myself creatively constipated. 

Chapter 6: Resources for getting that idea on paper. 

I wanted to add another little section about how you can get those ideas down onto paper. Obviously, the more you practice, the better you’ll be at making the idea you see in your head transfer onto paper. But here are some tips that might help:

Don’t just draw one picture. Do several sketches, and take the picture that best resembles what you see in your mind. Do these sketches quickly: don’t get hung up on detail. Jot down notes while the image is fresh. 

Most people are stuck on line art, but that’s only a small part of the picture. When you get an idea for an image, be sure to stop and think about WHY that picture appeals to you. Is it your idea for composition? Is it the colors? The design? The pose? Perspective? Don’t get stuck on just one aspect of the picture. 

When you have those idea, make them GROW. Start some research looked up poses/clothing/ anything that might bring you closer to your goal. There are TONS of online resources to make this possible, many for free.

The Three Key Elements of
Irresistible Email Subject Lines

Email is back.
Despite repeated proclamations of its extinction, rumors of the death of email marketing have been greatly exaggerated — especially since email and social media are a powerful combination. You might not reach the average college freshman, but for slightly older types (you know, the ones with the money), email is still the way to go in many lucrative mainstream niches.
You must first, of course, get your emails read. And it all starts with the subject line.
Email subject lines are a form of headline. They perform the same function as a headline by attracting attention and getting your email content a chance to be read.
So, headline fundamentals still apply. But the context is different, with the email space having its own funky little quirks that need to be accounted for.
Here’s the good news — email also implies a special relationship with the reader; a relationship that will get more of your messages read, even with subject lines that wouldn’t work in other headline contexts. Let’s take a look back at headline fundamentals, the specifics that apply to subject lines, and the “secret sauce” that makes email your top conversion channel.

1. The Fundamentals:

When you’re writing your next subject line, run it through this checklist, based on the Four “U” Approach to headline writing:

• Useful: Is the promised message valuable to the reader?
• Ultra-specific: Does the reader know what’s being promised?
• Unique: Is the promised message compelling and remarkable?
• Urgent: Does the reader feel the need to read now?

When you’re trying to get someone to take valuable time and invest it in your message, a subject line that properly incorporates all four of these elements can’t miss. And yet, execution in the email context can be tricky, so let’s drill down into subject-line specifics for greater clarity.

2. The Specifics:

Beyond headline fundamentals, these are the things to specifically focus on with email subject lines:

• Identify yourself: Over time, the most compelling thing about an email message should be that it’s from you. Even before then, your recipient needs to know at a glance that you’re a trusted source. Either make it crystal clear by smart use of your “From” field, or start every subject line with the same identifier. 
• Useful and specific first: Of the four “U” fundamentals, focus on useful and ultra-specific, even if you have to ignore unique and urgent. There are plenty of others who work at unique and urgent with every subject line — we call them spammers. Don’t cross the line into subject lines that are perceived as garbage. But do throw in a bit of a tease.
• Urgent when it’s useful: When every message from you is urgent, none is. Use urgency when it’s actually useful, such as when there’s a real deadline or compelling reason to act now. If you’re running your email marketing based on value and great offers, people don’t want to miss out and need to know how much time they have.
• Rely on spam checking software: We all know that certain words trigger spam filters, but there’s a lot of confusion out there about which words are the problem. Is it okay to use the word “free” in a subject line? Actually, yes. All reputable email services provide spam checking software as part of the service or as an add-on. Craft your messages with compelling language, let the software do its job, and adjust when you have to.
• Shorter is better: Subject line real estate is valuable, so the more compact your subject line, the better. Don’t forget useful and ultra-specific, but try to compress the fundamentals into the most powerful promise possible.

3. The Secret Sauce:

Getting someone to trust you with their email address is not easy.

But if you do gain that initial trust, and more importantly, confirm and grow it, you can write pretty lame subject lines and people will still read your messages. Just as with that ditzy friend from high school who nonetheless always has something interesting to say, trust and substance matter most.
Don’t get me wrong, writing great subject lines combined with the more intimate relationship email represents is much more effective. And you have to get your initial messages read to establish the relationship in the first place. Regardless, your open rates will improve based on the quality of your subject line.
But there’s something special in this jaded digital age about being invited into someone’s email inbox. You just have to over-deliver on the value to ensure you’re a treasured guest who gets invited back.

The inbox can be a stressful place. How do you make it brighter?

 Y4RYT86E29NV

Older but Not Wiser? The Psychology Behind Seniors' Susceptibility to Scams

New studies help explain why, despite having more experience, senior citizens often make unprofitable financial choices.

The invitations come in the mail, covered in large print: "Investment Workshop—Free Gourmet Lunch!" "Avoid the Biggest Financial Mistakes Seniors Make!" "Protect Your Financial Security!"

At the lunch, the salmon is accompanied by an investment pitch, with reminders that "there's a high rate of return," and "only a few opportunities are left."

Many of these free lunch seminars are scams aimed at retirees. Nearly six million seniors have attended such seminars in the past three years, the senior advocacy group AARP estimates—although conventional wisdom says that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Despite their years of experience, however, older people are more likely to err in their financial decisions by overemphasizing potential benefits and downplaying potential risks. Now insights from psychology, economics and neuroscience may help us understand why and how those errors occur.

Older adults aren't as upset by possible financial losses as young people are, psychological research has shown, and Stanford University researchers found in a recent brain-imaging study that seniors' brains don't anticipate a loss as much as younger ones do. That might be leading them to make less rational—and therefore less profitable—choices. But the news isn't all bad; a better understanding of why these mistakes happen may make it easier to prevent them.


How aging affects financial choices
Economists have studied how aging impacts real-life financial behavior. Harvard University economist David Laibson and his colleagues looked at a variety of choices people make about loans and credit cards, in a study in 2009. They found that people on the younger and older ends of the age spectrum ended up making more mistakes—that is, decisions that cost them money—than did middle-aged people. For home equity loans, for instance, 25-year-olds and 80-year-olds had loans with annual percentage rates of about 6 percent; 50-year-olds had rates of 5.5 percent. On average, across the different types of choices, people made the fewest mistakes at age 53.

Good financial choices require both strategy and execution, an understanding of how financial systems work, and the mental acuity to find and choose the best option. Strategy becomes easier with age, Laibson suggests, but the execution gets harder. "Experience brings improvement," he says, "but after a point, that accumulation of experience starts to get overwhelmed by decline of cognitive function."

This hypothesis matches up with what psychologists know about cognitive aging. "There's a pretty straightforward story," says Scott Huettel, a cognitive neuroscientist who studies decision-making and aging at Duke University's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. "More or less all of our cognitive abilities decline throughout the life span." A large body of research has shown that a wide variety of skills, including memory, analytical reasoning and processing speed, decrease as we age. The one thing that stays constant or even increases, Huettel says, is crystallized intelligence, a person's accrued knowledge about the world—in other words, experience.

But it's not just memory and reasoning that matter. "We use our gut feelings and our emotions to guide us to make decisions," says Mara Mather, a psychologist who studies aging, emotion and memory at the University of Southern California School of Gerontology. Contrary to stereotype, older people generally feel more optimistic than young people do, and are more likely to focus on the potential upsides of a situation. As people age and begin to feel that their time is limited, some researchers suggest, they seek out emotional fulfillment. This tendency to focus on the positive changes the decisions older people make.

Brain changes and bank changes

The Stanford team of psychologists and neuroscientists, meanwhile, are studying how those cognitive and emotional effects of aging play out in the brain during financial decision-making. Functional brain imaging can be notoriously difficult to interpret on its own, but combined with behavioral research, it may help researchers answer the question: As people age, what changes in the brain are tied to less change in the bank?

It's important to note that increased activity in a particular brain area doesn't mean that area is making people think or feel a certain way. Brain imaging lets neuroscientists associate a mental activity—like a thought or a feeling—and a brain region. The data do not inform on causation, but when brain scans are matched up with behavioral results, they can help scientists suss out which brain areas play a role in that thought process or emotion.

The researchers found that younger and older adults felt equally good when expecting a gain, and they showed the same increase in activity in the nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain important in anticipating rewards.

When expecting a loss, however, younger and older adults responded differently. Younger adults reported being more upset and showed higher blood flow in the insula, a part of the brain implicated in negative emotions. As the amount of money at stake increased, so did negative feelings and insula activation. The older adults, on the other hand, didn't feel as bad as younger adults did, and showed less activation in the insula.This doesn't mean that older people don't care if they lose money.Rather, it shows their bias toward the positive at work in their brains.They weren't getting as anxious about the prospect of losing money as the younger adults were.

Whereas looking on the bright side is emotionally beneficial, it has drawbacks in financial decision-making, when it's important to consider possible losses. Think of the "high rate of return" promised at the lunch seminar. Sounds great, but big returns usually require big risks. If they're not worrying about those risks, the seniors at that seminar might be more likely to sign up, even if the investment isn't a good one overall. The same could be true for a range of financial decisions. Seniors might shrug off a credit card's high interest rates, for instance, if they're focused on a program that offers great rewards.

The risks of random choices
In a more recent study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience in January 2010, Samanez-Larkin and the other researchers asked younger and older adults to participate in an investment game, again while in an MRI machine. On each turn, people could choose among two types of stock, randomly deemed either "good" or "bad" by a computer, and a bond, which always yielded $1. The participants, however, were not informed which stocks the computer labeled bad or good. Whereas the good stock yielded a $10 gain half the time, 25 percent of the time it would yield nothing, and in the remaining percentage, a $10 loss. For the bad stock, the probabilities of gain and loss were reversed, with a loss occurring half the time, etcetera. People weren't told the outcomes of each stock after each turn, but deduced them as the game went on—much the way people pick stocks to invest in based on past performance.

The researchers found that older people were just as skilled as younger people at balancing the safe bonds with the riskier stocks. In other words, they didn't make many mistakes because they acted in a risk-averse manner, as is often assumed of older people.

But when it came to choosing between the good and bad stocks, older people were significantly more likely to choose the bad one than younger people were. Before making a risky decision, all subjects showed increased activation in the nucleus accumbens, the same region that was activated by expecting a gain in the previous study. Now they were expecting the reward of a risky, but ultimately profitable, choice. But in older adults this pre-risk activity in the nucleus accumbens was much noisier, with more variability in its strength and timing.

This variability in nucleus accumbens activity could be linked to difficulty in picking the right stock, says Brian Knutson, a Stanford neuroscientist working on the study who researches emotion and decision-making. Older people "might be choosing more randomly when they take risks," due to fuzzier signals in the nucleus accumbens that don't clearly differentiate the good stock from the bad.

Anyone who invests in the stock market takes on some risk, but they generally do it expecting to make a profit. This study suggests it can be particularly hard for older people to differentiate profitable risks from unprofitable ones. Even if their current, more conservative portfolios will probably earn more than the new investment being touted at the lunch seminar, older people might be more ready to risk them after being misinformed by scammers because they are too optimistic about the chances of profitable returns on risky investments.

But a clearer understanding of the obstacles to good financial decision-making that older people face suggests some ways to clear the path.  Providing clear information about the average payout of a stock—which many investment companies do—can help older people tell goods risks from bad, Knutson says. If older people know they're prone to focus on the upside of their financial decisions, taking the time to think carefully about possible losses might help them avoid costly choices. And since they're more likely to err, older people can benefit from listening to a trusted advisor before making big financial decisions—and, perhaps, by throwing out any free lunch invitations that come in the mail, or at least attending and ignoring the scammers' pitch while eating lunch on their dime.