OFFICE PARTY CUTS: You may not have to worry about embarrassing yourself at your company's holiday party this year. That's because there's a chance they may not have one.

A recent poll of human resource executives found that limits to discretionary spending due to economic turbulence could lead to fewer office parties. Of the 450 who responded, 58 percent said the first thing to go would be the corporate holiday party.

Almost half said the cuts would be to their training budgets, while 74 percent said business travel and entertainment would be affected.

Just over half of the human resource executives polled said cuts will affect annual incentives and bonus payments compared with last year.

The online survey, conducted by management consulting firm Towers Perrin, polled executives at companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenues in the financial services, energy, insurance and technology sectors. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

ADVERTISING MYTHS: Does sex really sell?

Oftentimes, sex doesn't sell anything other than itself, according to Martin Lindstrom's recently released book "Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy." His research found that a racy ad can often distract someone from a product altogether.

Lindstrom used MRI exams on more than 2,000 people to observe how they reacted to certain ads, and found that advertising myths like the one that "sex sells" can have unintended consequences for a company. More often than not, it's the consumer who's being fooled, he said.

Negative campaigns like anti-smoking billboards and commercials can help sell the very product they're warning against, Lindstrom said, driving people to crave tobacco because of a link formed in the brain between the message and the pleasure of smoking.

"These warnings are having the complete opposite effect of what people expect," Lindstrom said, noting that tobacco companies often fund anti-smoking campaigns. "When we see these warnings we let our critical guard down, making us even more vulnerable to this strategic advertising. It's manipulative, really."