Are people more fair with those who are attractive?
ciprocity evolves only when social partners reliably repay, with interest, the investments of others. However, not all individuals are equally able—or motivated—to recompense others satisfactorily. As such, reciprocity relies greatly on the capacities and motives of partners. Apparent health may provide a cue to the value of potential exchange partners in this regard: healthier individuals will tend to live longer and accrue more, higher quality resources, thus increasing the incentives for mutual cooperation. In a monetary exchange task, we show…
1 min read
Does marriage inhibit antisocial behavior?
ntext Previous studies have indicated that marriageis negatively associated with male antisocial behavior. Althoughoften interpreted as a causal association, marriage is not arandom event. As such, the association may stem from selectionprocesses, whereby men less inclined toward antisocial behaviorare more likely to marry. Objective To evaluate selection vs causation explanationsof the association between marriage and desistence from antisocialbehavior. Design Co-twin control analyses in a prospective twinstudy provided an analogue of the idealized counterfactual modelof causation. The co-twin control design uses…
2 minutes
Do positive expectations and fantasies help you achieve goals?
sitive expectations do. Positive fantasies don't: Two forms of thinking about the future are distinguished: expectations versus fantasies. Positive expectations (judging a desired future as likely) predicted high effort and successful performance, but the reverse was true for positive fantasies (experiencing one's thoughts and mental images about a desired future positively). Participants were graduates looking for a job (Study 1), students with a crush on a peer of the opposite sex (Study 2), undergraduates anticipating an exam (Study 3), and…
2 minutes
Can escalators make you a better person?
ny challenges of society involve getting people to act prosocially in ways that are costly for self-interests but beneficial to the greater good. The authors in four studies examined the novel hypothesis that elevating (vertical) height promotes prosocial actions. In Study 1, shoppers riding up (vs. down) escalators contributed more often to charity. In Study 2, participants sitting higher (vs. lower) helped another longer, while in Study 3 participants sitting higher (vs. lower) were more compassionate. In Study 4, watching…
1 min read
Can teddy bears help us cope with rejection?
ere is little empirical research to date that looks at how the deleterious effects of social exclusion can be mitigated. We examined how touching an inanimate object—a teddy bear—might impact the effect of social exclusion on prosocial behavior. Across two studies, we found that socially excluded individuals who touched a teddy bear acted more prosocially as compared to socially excluded individuals who just viewed the teddy bear from a distance. This effect was only observed for socially excluded participants and…
1 min read
Do religious people tip better than nonreligious people?
ligious people are thought to be more prosocial than nonreligious people. Laboratory studies of this using ultimatum, dictator, public goods and trust games have produced mixed results, which could be due to lack of context. This article examines the relationship between religion and prosocial behaviour using data from a context-rich, naturally occurring field experiment that closely resembles the dictator game - tipping in restaurants. Customers were surveyed as they left a set of restaurants in Richmond, Virginia, in the summers…
1 min read
Do people buy healthier food for themselves or for their dogs?
tivated by the fact that pet food and pet care is a big business and pet owners in the United States spend more on their pets each year, the objective of this research is to determine whether dog owners buy for their dogs the way they buy for themselves. The data show that dog owners are more loyal to dog food brands than human food brands. Dog owners are also found to be more sensitive to human food price than…
1 min read
The Secret To Staying Young
king yourself look young helps you stay young: Environmental cues that signal aging may directly and indirectly prime diminished capacity. Similarly, the absence of these cues may prime improved health. The authors investigated the effects of age cues on health and longevity in five very different settings. The findings include the following: First, women who think they look younger after having their hair colored/cut show a decrease in blood pressure and appear younger in photographs (in which their hair is cropped…
2 minutes
