#3. Your Popularity
Have you ever seen one of those teen comedies where the nerdy girl/guy gets a makeover and suddenly becomes the coolest kid in school? We love those movies because they give us hope. Even if you're the weird kid who's constantly getting picked on, there's no reason whatsoever why you can't become popular.
With time and practice, you too can become a full powerhouse of charisma and animal magnetism. Put some cheesy yet strangely inspirational 1980s rock on -- it's montage time, bitches!
Scientists have found that there's a chance a good chunk of your popularity (or lack thereof) is, again, just something you're born with. In this particular study by what we're going to call the Ruining Our Dreams Forever Institute, researchers gathered 100 male college students who didn't know each other and had them interact in small groups.
After some DNA sampling and questionnaire filling, it turned out the students who were the most popular among the group all shared a gene associated with "mild" rule-breaking behaviors, such as drinking (but not any of the more extreme antisocial stuff, like violent behavior or ironic mustaches).
In other words, people who break the rules in a "cool" way end up being more popular, but this isn't something they learn to do. They're just born to be wild (in a socially acceptable way), baby!
Researchers have also studied the social networks of over 1,000 adolescent twins and measured each person's popularity by how often others named them as a friend (as opposed to "that creepy loser dude who keeps tagging along with us"). As with the previous study, the research found that a person's popularity is strongly linked to their genetics.
So, what does this mean? Some people are just born to be at the center of everyone's social circles, while others are born to stand in the hedges outside, peering through the window at the awesome party they weren't invited to?
Of course not! Sometimes the parties are outdoors and they can creep from home.
Not quite. There is actually one perk to being born less popular. Since popular people tend to be at the center of social networks, they're also more likely to be the first ones afflicted when a disease epidemic breaks out.
So, yes -- science may say that we were born unpopular and there's precious little we can do to change that, but at least we have a legitimate excuse to stab our more popular friends in the brain when they inevitably become Patient Zero of the zombie apocalypse.
"But Cracked," you might be saying. "Doesn't popularity really come down to confidence? Can't we become cool just by building our self-esteem?" We're glad you brought that up, because another thing that appears to come from your genes is ...
#2. Your Confidence
Have you ever noticed that the world seems to be full of very dimwitted people who think they're God's gift to mankind? And, even worse, that a lot of these people turn out to be really successful?
You see it in people like Donald Trump, some professional athletes, and many if not most politicians. No matter how stupid the shit that falls out of their mouth is, others cling to their every word purely because they seem so goddamned sure of themselves. Hell, Adolf Hitler was a bumbling dipshit, but goddamn did he spew his bullshit with conviction.
So here's a question: If these people's confidence doesn't come from actual accomplishments, where do they get it?
According to the latest research, they're born with it. They did a study on 3,700 pairs of twins (which is how you do a study when you want to weed out factors like parenting techniques and upbringing) and found that some kids come out of the womb assuming that they're awesome.
They can hear the same feedback as their siblings, but how they interpret it depends on what kind of brain they were born with.
And this is huge in terms of your probability of success in life -- confidence is everything when it comes to things like performing under pressure, when lingering doubts can derail you at the worst times. In fact, this natural confidence is actually a greater predictor of school performance than IQ.
That's right -- the world will think you're smarter, as long as you have the magical ability to be stupidly oblivious to your own faults.
So while the rest of us are struggling to find the confidence to order a pizza from that place with the delivery guy who has that scary tattoo, these people feast on their never-ending supply of self-belief, happily waltzing their way to great social skills, good jobs, and fat bank accounts.
And while we're on the subject ...
#1. Your Talent for Leadership
Yeah, you're starting to see a pattern here, aren't you?
You've been hearing the term "born leader" your whole life, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. After all, there's a whole stew of indefinable traits that go into being a good leader, above and beyond the aforementioned confidence: intelligence, aggressiveness, charisma, experience, even physical attractiveness.
Yet, once again, researchers found one DNA sequence that turned up again and again in people who (in this case) wound up in supervisor roles at their jobs.
Now, just because an infant is destined to be 7 feet tall, that doesn't automatically mean he'll play in the NBA, and the presence of this gene doesn't mean you don't have to work at building leadership skills.
But it does appear to mean that some people are born with a certain raw talent for taking control. And, as every RPG enthusiast knows, the game is a hell of a lot easier if your base attributes amount to more than a sackful of rat turds.
In another study, scientists found that leadership ability comes down to how well your brain is wired for adaptability and prioritization of tasks. That came from a study of the brain activity of West Point cadets, which found profound differences in the way the brains of "leaders" and "non-leaders" operate under duress.
These variations not only mean that "leader" brains are more adaptable and better adjust to new situations, but also give scientists hope that they can one day manipulate our leaders' brains with neurofeedback techniques in order to "make them work better."
In other news, there's no way you'll ever convince us that the founder of that particular research doesn't wear a monocle and call himself Professor Murder.
Have you ever seen one of those teen comedies where the nerdy girl/guy gets a makeover and suddenly becomes the coolest kid in school? We love those movies because they give us hope. Even if you're the weird kid who's constantly getting picked on, there's no reason whatsoever why you can't become popular.
With time and practice, you too can become a full powerhouse of charisma and animal magnetism. Put some cheesy yet strangely inspirational 1980s rock on -- it's montage time, bitches!
Scientists have found that there's a chance a good chunk of your popularity (or lack thereof) is, again, just something you're born with. In this particular study by what we're going to call the Ruining Our Dreams Forever Institute, researchers gathered 100 male college students who didn't know each other and had them interact in small groups.
After some DNA sampling and questionnaire filling, it turned out the students who were the most popular among the group all shared a gene associated with "mild" rule-breaking behaviors, such as drinking (but not any of the more extreme antisocial stuff, like violent behavior or ironic mustaches).
In other words, people who break the rules in a "cool" way end up being more popular, but this isn't something they learn to do. They're just born to be wild (in a socially acceptable way), baby!
Researchers have also studied the social networks of over 1,000 adolescent twins and measured each person's popularity by how often others named them as a friend (as opposed to "that creepy loser dude who keeps tagging along with us"). As with the previous study, the research found that a person's popularity is strongly linked to their genetics.
So, what does this mean? Some people are just born to be at the center of everyone's social circles, while others are born to stand in the hedges outside, peering through the window at the awesome party they weren't invited to?
Of course not! Sometimes the parties are outdoors and they can creep from home.
Not quite. There is actually one perk to being born less popular. Since popular people tend to be at the center of social networks, they're also more likely to be the first ones afflicted when a disease epidemic breaks out.
So, yes -- science may say that we were born unpopular and there's precious little we can do to change that, but at least we have a legitimate excuse to stab our more popular friends in the brain when they inevitably become Patient Zero of the zombie apocalypse.
"But Cracked," you might be saying. "Doesn't popularity really come down to confidence? Can't we become cool just by building our self-esteem?" We're glad you brought that up, because another thing that appears to come from your genes is ...
#2. Your Confidence
Have you ever noticed that the world seems to be full of very dimwitted people who think they're God's gift to mankind? And, even worse, that a lot of these people turn out to be really successful?
You see it in people like Donald Trump, some professional athletes, and many if not most politicians. No matter how stupid the shit that falls out of their mouth is, others cling to their every word purely because they seem so goddamned sure of themselves. Hell, Adolf Hitler was a bumbling dipshit, but goddamn did he spew his bullshit with conviction.
So here's a question: If these people's confidence doesn't come from actual accomplishments, where do they get it?
According to the latest research, they're born with it. They did a study on 3,700 pairs of twins (which is how you do a study when you want to weed out factors like parenting techniques and upbringing) and found that some kids come out of the womb assuming that they're awesome.
They can hear the same feedback as their siblings, but how they interpret it depends on what kind of brain they were born with.
And this is huge in terms of your probability of success in life -- confidence is everything when it comes to things like performing under pressure, when lingering doubts can derail you at the worst times. In fact, this natural confidence is actually a greater predictor of school performance than IQ.
That's right -- the world will think you're smarter, as long as you have the magical ability to be stupidly oblivious to your own faults.
So while the rest of us are struggling to find the confidence to order a pizza from that place with the delivery guy who has that scary tattoo, these people feast on their never-ending supply of self-belief, happily waltzing their way to great social skills, good jobs, and fat bank accounts.
And while we're on the subject ...
#1. Your Talent for Leadership
Yeah, you're starting to see a pattern here, aren't you?
You've been hearing the term "born leader" your whole life, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. After all, there's a whole stew of indefinable traits that go into being a good leader, above and beyond the aforementioned confidence: intelligence, aggressiveness, charisma, experience, even physical attractiveness.
Yet, once again, researchers found one DNA sequence that turned up again and again in people who (in this case) wound up in supervisor roles at their jobs.
Now, just because an infant is destined to be 7 feet tall, that doesn't automatically mean he'll play in the NBA, and the presence of this gene doesn't mean you don't have to work at building leadership skills.
But it does appear to mean that some people are born with a certain raw talent for taking control. And, as every RPG enthusiast knows, the game is a hell of a lot easier if your base attributes amount to more than a sackful of rat turds.
In another study, scientists found that leadership ability comes down to how well your brain is wired for adaptability and prioritization of tasks. That came from a study of the brain activity of West Point cadets, which found profound differences in the way the brains of "leaders" and "non-leaders" operate under duress.
These variations not only mean that "leader" brains are more adaptable and better adjust to new situations, but also give scientists hope that they can one day manipulate our leaders' brains with neurofeedback techniques in order to "make them work better."
In other news, there's no way you'll ever convince us that the founder of that particular research doesn't wear a monocle and call himself Professor Murder.
