Can Facebook predict who you’re going to be dating next week?
a The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World (Hat tip: Allfacebook): As the service’s engineers built more and more tools that could uncover such insights, Zuckerberg sometimes amused himself by conducting experiments. For instance, he concluded that by examining friend relationships and communications patterns he could determine with about 33 percent accuracy who a user was going to be in a relationship with a week from now. To deduce this he studied who…
1 min read
The Formula That Predicts How Long Celebrity Marriages Will Last
hn Tierney reports on a formula created by Garth Sundem, author of Brain Trust: 93 Top Scientists Reveal Lab-Tested Secrets to Surfing, Dating, Dieting, Gambling, Growing Man-Eating Plants, and More!. Garth, a self-professed über-geek, has crunched the numbers and discovered a better way to gauge the toxic effects of celebrity. Whereas the old equation measured fame by counting the millions of Google hits, the new equation uses a ratio of two other measures: the number of mentions in The Times…
2 minutes
10 Secrets You Need To Know About Sexual Satisfaction, Backed By Research
re's a list of scientific factors associated with sexual satisfaction. Birth control pills make women more likely to pick men who satisfy them less sexually but make them more satisfied with their relationships. What women look for in one night stands and long term relationships is very different. Age difference has a big effect on how sexually satisfied husbands and wives are. Here's a list of what keeps men and women sexually satisfied over time. Here's one you probably knew…
1 min read
Do red clothes mean sex?
a The Huffington Post: In a previous study, scientists showed that men seem to be more attracted to women clothed in red rather than in a blah color such as white. That's regardless of the cut, he adds. "It doesn't have to be a red dress or a sexy outfit," he says. "It can be a red T-shirt." To understand why, Pazda and his colleagues conducted a simple experiment. They showed 25 men a photo of a single woman doctored…
1 min read
Can teddy bears make you more ethical?
nt people to play nice and not cheat each other? Bring toys. Via Harvard Business Review: The finding: Adults are less likely to cheat and more likely to engage in “pro-social” behaviors when reminders of children, such as teddy bears and crayons, are present. The research: Sreedhari Desai and her research partner Francesca Gino had people play classic psychology games in which the subjects controlled how much money other people earned and could earn more themselves if they lied. Half…
1 min read
10 Ways To Read People Like Sherlock Holmes, Backed By Research
e BBC series Sherlock is currently my favorite show on television. Sherlock Holmes instantly decodes someone's life story and personality from a quick look at the person and their belongings. Of course, the show is fiction. But Sherlock Holmes is a great example of expert behavior. How much of his skill could we possess in real life with knowledge of the research on what factors predict which personality traits -- and which signals are reliable? Here's a quick rundown on…
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Do gentlemen prefer blondes?
d Saad has an interesting review of research showing that, yes, men are more likely to approach blondes. The study sought to "determine whether the same woman would be differentially approached by men at one of three nightclubs as a function of whether she was a brunette, blonde, or redhead (hair color was manipulated using dye)". The results? Blonde Brunette Redhead Nightclub 1 26 …
1 min read
This Is Why First Impressions Can Be Dangerous
can become a slave to our first impressions. Once we've set them, they can be hard to change. Via David McRaney's You Are Not So Smart: A study in 1997 by Wilkielman, Zajonc, and Shwartz created first impressions in subjects with images of smiles and frowns. The people in the study saw a photo of either a happy or a sad face flash briefly on a screen and then were shown an unfamiliar Chinese character and asked to say…
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