Social discomfort is so universal that social psychologists like me have made careers out of studying it. We can find it almost anywhere, like in salary negotiations or small talk conversations that have one too many awkward pauses.

Almost everyone will at some point find themselves in an interaction that makes them feel uncomfortable. And at work, these situations come up daily. We give and take feedback, manage team dynamics, and navigate status differences. 

Most of us take a simple approach to quelling the discomfort: We smile as hard as we can, laugh (even when nothing is funny), and bend over backwards to convince people: There’s nothing to worry about here. This interaction will be a positive one. I am nice. 

Maybe too nice?     

There is a sad irony here: The harder we try to use niceness to cover up our discomfort, the more people can see right through us.

Humans are good at picking up on emotions, which leak out through our nonverbal behaviors, like tone of voice. We think we’re doing a good job of masking anxiety by layering on the compliments, but when those compliments are delivered through artificial smiles, no one is buying it.

DON’T MISS: How to successfully change careers and be happier at work

Often, we regulate our discomfort by giving feedback that is so generic, it’s not useful. Think of your classic, “Great job!” In many cases, it’s also unearned. 

Overly positive feedback signals that you’re not paying attention — and you probably aren’t, if you’re too busy trying to regulate yourself. Over time, the person on the receiving end becomes distrustful of you. They need specific information that would actually help them improve their work. 

Many people work in environments where being overly nice is the norm. Here are three things you can do to shift that culture to one in which honest, useful feedback is valued instead. 

1. Question the ‘niceness culture’

Ask yourself: Does everyone around me enjoy this overly nice culture, or are they doing it because everyone else is doing it? 

Social norms are a big driver of behaviors, and the quicker newcomers adopt those norms, the sooner they’ll be perceived as “fitting in.” If a newcomer observes everyone laying on compliments after a subpar presentation, they’ll do the same.

If no one explicitly questions this behavior, the result is what social psychologists call “pluralistic ignorance”: Everybody assumes that everyone else is engaging in overly nice feedback because they want to. But secretly, nobody likes it.

Start a conversation around change. Get a sense of what people really feel about the nice culture. One way to do this is by proposing alternatives. 

Before the next presentation, for example, you might ask people: “How would you feel if we each wrote down three specific things that you could improve and three specific things that you should definitely keep at the end of the presentation?” 

2. Be precise and particular

It’s natural for us to extrapolate from behaviors to form impressions and make assumptions. For example, we might decide that someone who is chronically late is lazy. But impressions are often too general to be useful, even if they’re positive. 

Strive for specific, behavior-based feedback instead. The more precisely you can pinpoint the issue — that a presentation that had too much jargon, for example, rather than “it was boring” — the more useful the feedback will be.

The same goes for praise. If you tell someone exactly what they did well or why their work was excellent, you’ll come off as more genuine and your feedback will be more meaningful.  

Removing broad generalizations from the equation has the added benefit of reducing threat for the person on the receiving end, especially if that feedback is critical. 

3. If you’re new at this, start small and neutral

It can feel like jumping off a cliff, moving from an overly nice feedback culture to an honest one. 

Start small. Pick issues that are mundane, but that people still care about, like what to stock in the office kitchen. Nothing that will get anyone’s blood boiling. The goal is to build the feedback muscle. That way, once you jump into the tougher stuff, the norms around honesty have already started to change.  

As you work on shifting the culture around you, be patient. Norms take a long time to form, and a long time to change.

Tessa West is a social psychologist and professor at New York University. She has spent years leveraging science to help people solve interpersonal conflicts in the workplace. She’s the author of ”Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them″ and ”Job Therapy: Finding Work That Works for You.” She is an instructor in CNBC’s online course How to Change Careers and Be Happier at Work.

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While going to college tends to mean better pay, not all degrees guarantee high salaries — especially if you study liberal arts.

That’s according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which shows that graduates who major in education, social work or the arts tend to earn the lowest median incomes within five years of finishing school. The analysis includes only full-time workers with a bachelor’s degree and excludes those still enrolled in school.

The salary figures are based on 2023 data, the most recent available, and show early-career pay in these fields falls below the U.S. median wage of $48,060 for that year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While engineering majors can make upward of $80,000 early in their careers, many liberal arts and education majors earn closer to $40,000. The median salary of all majors examined was $50,000.

Here’s a look at the 10 majors linked to the lowest median salaries for full-time workers ages 22 to 27.

While learning a foreign language is a valuable skill, a degree in the subject doesn’t always lead to high-paying roles. That’s likely because language can be learned outside a formal education and many graduates tend to go into relatively low-paying fields, like education, translation or public service.

Liberal arts majors also tend to earn less than graduates in technical fields like engineering or math, largely because there’s less demand for their skills in higher-paying industries like technology and finance.

Unfortunately, many liberal arts majors don’t fare much better as they get older, especially those in education. Here’s a look at the 10 lowest-paying majors for full-time workers between ages 35 and 45.

Early childhood education majors earn the least of all mid-career graduates, with a median income of $49,000 — just $8,000 more than what they earned five years after graduation.

By contrast, engineering majors typically break into six figures by mid-career.

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Sora Lee has worked for some of the biggest names in tech — and earned six-figure salaries doing so.

The 34-year-old worked at Netflix, Meta and TikTok before starting Kurated Agency, which aims to connect Korean beauty brands with creators and outlets in the U.S., in 2023.

Lee didn’t plan to work in tech when she was an undergraduate student studying economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley. But she started her career at a startup called TubeMogul, and continued in tech from there.

In a little over 10 years, Lee honed her business skills and leveraged her connections, growing her salary from around $40,000 to the $400,000 in total annual compensation she was earning when she left TikTok. And in recent years, she brought in additional income through speaking engagements and content creation on the side. 

She became a millionaire in 2024 due to consistent investing and maximizing her salary with every job change.

Here are four of her best pieces of advice for scaling up your career and your income. 

Many people ask Lee what they should major in in college, she says. But your major is less important than what you’re actually learning from your coursework, early jobs and internships.

“Be adaptive and focus on building skills that you can translate to other companies easily,” Lee says.

Especially in an industry like tech, what you study in college could become fairly obsolete by the time you’re looking for jobs, Lee says. There’s also a chance your dream job doesn’t exist yet.

Learning newer technology and staying up to date on the systems big companies use can help you pivot into roles you may not have previously considered. Lee says she could go after AI jobs because of her experience using those kinds of tools in her previous roles, despite not having held an AI-specific position.

If you’re exploring different career opportunities, it might seem exhausting to send out dozens of applications and attend multiple interviews. But Lee says interviewing with a variety of companies helps her learn what she wants in her next role. 

Interviewing for jobs is “very similar to dating,” she says, in the sense that if you go on a bunch of dates with potential partners, there will likely be a healthy mix of good and bad ones, and you can learn from both.

The more interviews you do, the more you’ll see yourself getting excited and energized by certain aspects of each position, which can help you narrow your search, she says.

“You need to pay attention to how things make you feel,” Lee says.

While it’s important to know what you’re good at and what you enjoy, Lee says it’s just as crucial to identify which of your skills can help you make money.

“Especially when you’re younger, unless you’re rolling in money, it’s important to start gaining skills that you have seen [provide] some success,” she says.

“Follow your passion” is one of the worst pieces of advice Lee received when she was in college, she previously told CNBC Make It. That’s because plenty of people are passionate about something that won’t necessarily help them land a high-paying job.

“Figure out what you’re good at that people would pay money for and figure out your passion, and ideally, it’s aligned,” Lee says. 

Especially in the face of rejection, it can be tempting to fake certain traits to try to get through an interview or land a role. But authenticity is incredibly valuable, Lee says.

“Be really unapologetically you,” she says. That can be difficult for young people still trying to figure out who they are, but “having your personal brand is really important.”

Lee says her content creation side hustle has helped her become more comfortable and confident in her own skin, which has helped her do her full-time jobs better. Her social media following has also been an asset when interviewing with companies like Meta and TikTok because it shows she understands the platforms both from the technical side and the creator side, she says.

Do you want a new career that’s higher-paying, more flexible or fulfilling? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Change Careers and Be Happier at Work. Expert instructors will teach you strategies to network successfully, revamp your resume and confidently transition into your dream career. Start today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+taxes and fees) through May 13, 2025.

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Chief people and community officer at BetterUp and former Visa human resources exec Jolen Anderson has some preferences for the resumes she sees from applicants.

First, she doesn’t like to see short stints. “You want to see some consistency and some longevity and people feeling connected and committed to a company,” she says. And second, she wants to see “a clear articulation of impact,” or quantifiable proof of your success on the job.

Anderson has some red flags for candidates coming into a job interview as well. Her biggest one: “Someone who has not done their homework,” she says, “has not done their research on the company, has not done their research on you.”

Here’s why and how she recommends job-seekers prepare.

Anderson likes to see that the candidate knows about the company and people interviewing them for a number of reasons.

First, that level of preparedness “shows how you approach work,” she says. “It shows how you took initiative.” It gives an indication of the level of care and effort you’d put into the job. If you really took the time, you’re likely to do the same when hired.  

It also “shows interest in the company,” she says. Companies “want to feel chosen,” she says. “You don’t want to feel like somebody’s backup or second choice.” If the candidate has researched you beforehand, it gives a sense of their enthusiasm for the opportunity.

Many people echo Anderson’s sentiments about this red flag. “I’m actually shocked at how many times people don’t do their homework,” Hello Alice CEO Elizabeth Gore previously told CNBC Make It.

It’s easy enough to do this research.

“Any search engine is a fantastic source,” says Anderson. “Most people have some level of public profile on different platforms where you can at least find out a little bit about their background and experiences.” Google, Bing, LinkedIn, a company profile — whatever you decide to use, the information is there.

You can also reach out to your network and see if anyone knows the company or people you’ll be speaking with. Ask family and friends, “Hey, I’m doing an interview with XYZ company,” she says. “Does anybody know someone from there? Can you make a connection for me?”

However you choose to go about it, make sure you come in knowing exactly who’s interviewing you and what for.

Do you want a new career that’s higher-paying, more flexible or fulfilling? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Change Careers and Be Happier at Work. Expert instructors will teach you strategies to network successfully, revamp your resume and confidently transition into your dream career. Sign up today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+taxes and fees) through May 13, 2025.

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Coca-Cola’s stock has a reputation for resilience — and amid recent market turmoil, it’s once again outperforming the broader stock market.

As a consumer staples company, Coca-Cola sells products that people continue to buy even during economic downturns, helping the stock perform more steadily in volatile markets. Its long history of consistent dividend payments has also made it a blue chip favorite among long-term investors.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, one of Coca-Cola’s largest shareholders, has held the stock since 1988, underscoring its appeal to long-term investors.

The beverage giant reported first-quarter earnings Tuesday morning, with revenue coming in at $11.22 billion, topping analysts’ expectations of $11.14 billion, according to LSEG estimates. Earnings per share were 73 cents, slightly beating analysts’ forecast of 71 cents.

Recent product launches of limited edition soda flavors and strong demand overseas has helped with sales growth despite a more cautious consumer backdrop.

As of market close on April 28, Coca-Cola’s stock price was $71.79, reflecting a year-over-year increase of approximately 16.3%. That’s nearly double the S&P 500′s increase of 8.4% over the same period.

Here’s how much the total return, including reinvested dividends, for a $1,000 investment in Coca-Cola would be worth today if you had bought shares one year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago or at the end of 1988 — around when Warren Buffett first started investing — based on the stock’s April 28 closing price of $71.79.

If you invested one year ago:

• Percentage change: 19.5%
• Total: $1,195

If you invested five years ago:

• Percentage change: 72.8%
• Total: $1,728

If you invested 10 years ago:

• Percentage change: 116.3%
• Total: $2,163

If you invested in 1988:

• Percentage change: 3,534.2%
• Total: $36,487

While Coca-Cola has been an investor favorite for decades, no stock is completely free from risk. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and even the most established companies can underperform over time.

Most financial experts recommend spreading your money across a range of investments rather than betting too heavily on a single stock.

Low-cost index funds, which invest broadly across the market, tend to offer more stability and lower fees than picking individual stocks.

Want a new career that’s higher-paying, more flexible or fulfilling? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Change Careers and Be Happier at Work. Expert instructors will teach you strategies to network successfully, revamp your resume and confidently transition into your dream career. Start today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+taxes and fees) through May 13, 2025.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.