Why do we always root for the underdog?
niel Engber has a long and fascinating piece in Slate about the psychology of underdogs. It references a few studies to answer the question, "Do we really love underdogs?" Definitely: In 1991, a pair of researchers at Bowling Green State University, Jimmy Frazier and Eldon Snyder, published a paper on what they called "the underdog concept in sport." Frazier and Snyder posed a simple hypothetical scenario to more than 100 college students: Two teams, A and B, were meeting in…
2 minutes
Why are lawyers so unhappy? (And how can we use this to be happier?)
rtin Seligman, psychology professor at UPenn and author of Authentic Happiness, clues us in as to just how unhappy lawyers are: Researchers at John Hopkins University found statistically significant elevations of major depressive disorder in only 3 of 104 occupations surveyed. When adjusted for sociodemographics, lawyers topped the list, suffering from depression at a rate of 3.6 times higher than employed persons generally. Lawyers also suffer from alcoholism and illegal drug use at rates far higher than non-lawyers. The divorce…
2 minutes
How much does it cost a country to win an Olympic Gold Medal?
cost Australia about $37 million per gold medal. Also interesting was the significant linear relationship found between money spent and medals won: In 1981 the Commonwealth Government established the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS). The Australian Sports Commission (ASC) which administers the AIS has 2 objectives: (1) excellence in sports performances; and (2) increased participation in sports and sports activities. State-based institutes of sport have also been established with the same or very similar objectives. Federal policy directs the…
2 minutes
Are left handed people more trustworthy or less trustworthy?
depends: Left-handed men are more generous, but left-handed women are less altruistic: It is now generally accepted that some people are more altruistic, more trusting, or more reciprocal than others, but it is still unclear whether these differences are innate or a consequence of nurture. We analyse the correlation between handedness and social preferences in the lab and find that left- handed men are significantly more generous when recipients have the possibility to reciprocate and exhibit stronger positive reciprocity…
4 minutes
What do most people on Twitter tweet about?
% tweet primarily about themselves and their thoughts, 20% largely post links and info: To address RQ2, we use Ward’s linkage cluster analysis to categorize users based on the types of messages that they typically post. We then use Kalensky’s analysis to detect the optimum number of clusters that minimizes the differences within groups and maximizes differences between groups. The analysis resulted in two clusters, which we labeled “Informers” (20% of users) and – to suggest a new term –…
1 min read
How can you make a gathering more social and friendly?
rning up the temperature a few degrees physically and emotionally makes people warmer: "Holding warm feelings toward someone" and "giving someone the cold shoulder" indicate different levels of social proximity. In this article, we show effects of temperature that go beyond these metaphors people live by. In three experiments, warmer conditions, compared with colder conditions, induced (a) greater social proximity, (b) use of more concrete language, and (c) a more relational focus. Different temperature conditions were created by either handing…
1 min read
What notably reduces pain? (Hint: you might already do it.)
earing. Via Time Magazine: In a previous study, psychologist Richard Stephens at Keele University in the U.K. and colleagues found that people who were asked to dunk their hand in ice-cold water were better able to tolerate the pain — and they left their hands in the buckets for a full 40 seconds longer — if they were allowed to swear, compared with people who were asked to utter a non-curse word. In the new study, Stephens repeated the previous…
2 minutes
What’s a good trick for outsmarting liars?
king them unexpected questions dramatically raises the chance you'll be able to detect their lies: We hypothesised that the responses of pairs of liars would correspond less with each other than would responses of pairs of truth tellers, but only when the responses are given to unanticipated questions. Liars and truth tellers were interviewed individually about having had lunch together in a restaurant. The interviewer asked typical opening questions which we expected the liars to anticipate, followed by questions about…
1 min read
