This week’s must-reads: Listening to a friend vent involves emotional sacrifice

In my work as a behavioral designer, I come across important stories on how psychology influences our behavior. Every week, I share my round-up of the most important stories at the intersection of psychology, technology and business. I hope you enjoy them!

This is How to Repair a Toxic Work Culture Google recently released the results of a two-year study that sought to answer the question, “What makes a Google team effective?”

Friendship is Always Emotional Labor (Medium) Whenever you listen to a friend vent, you make a sacrifice, conscious or not, to accept the negative effects of helping someone you care about.

Want to Know a Secret? Your Customers Do. (Conversionxl) Secrets deliberately withhold information for company benefit at consumer expense but deployed well, they capture attention, stoke curiosity, and dig an economic moat in consumer minds.

Helping Attendees Avoid Distractions at Events (PCMA) How do you help attendees avoid distractions during sessions and throughout an event so that they get the most out of their time on site?

How to Design Better Social Media (Medium) People want something different in social media, but we are dependent on them for our news, and emergency communications. How do we reconcile social media’s toxicity with their utility?

Five Essential Habits of Successful CEOs (Forbes) Five things that the most successful CEOs do to take control of their businesses and their lives.

Happy reading!

- Nir