What quality do we most desire in other people?
ross different types of groups and relationships (work, athletic teams, family members) trustworthiness was at the top: Humans, as discriminately social creatures, make frequent judgments about others’ suitability for interdependent social relations. Which characteristics of others guide these judgments and, thus, shape patterns of human affiliation? Extant research is only minimally useful for answering this question. On the basis of a sociofunctional analysis of human sociality, the authors hypothesized that people highly value trustworthiness and (to a lesser extent) cooperativeness…
2 minutes
This Is What Keeps Men And Women Sexually Satisfied
searchers surveyed 1000 couples in 5 countries looking at sexual satisfaction in relationships 1-51 years in length. Some interesting points: Men were more sexually satisfied with with their relationship when they had frequent recent sex and fewer lifetime sexual partners: "Lifetime number of sexual partners was a significant predictor of sexual but not relationship satisfaction, and this only for men. Men reported more lifetime sexual partners than women (M = 11.9 vs. 4.9). More sexual partners predicted less sexual satisfaction.…
3 minutes
Do people like us better when we’re distracted?
ems like it. It's not that being distracted isn't off-putting, but when distracted we're less negative, less complex and more personal in our speech. We also encourage the other person to talk more. From James Pennebaker's book The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us: ...distracted pairs actually showed slightly higher style matching than the non-distracted pair. Even odder, they tended to report liking each other more. In terms of actual word use, the distracted students were…
2 minutes
How To Get People To Be More Honest With You
ght want to Skype more often. People lie more often via text message. We're more honest via video than we are in the other mediums tested -- including in face to face. Via Science Daily: Sending a text message leads people to lie more often than in other forms of communication, according to new research by David Xu, assistant professor in the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University. And I found this surprising: The authors then…
1 min read
How much should we trust others? What are the consequences of trusting too much or too little?
ople were asked how much they trust others on a scale of 1 to 10. Income peaked at those who responded with the number 8. Those with the highest levels of trust had incomes 7% lower than the 8's. Research shows they are more likely to be taken advantage of. Those with the lowest levels of trust had an income 14.5% lower than 8's. That loss is the equivalent of not going to college. They missed many opportunities by not…
2 minutes
Can gossip be a good thing?
finitely. It helps police bad behavior in a social network and relieves stress. Via Eurekalert: For centuries, gossip has been dismissed as salacious, idle chatter that can damage reputations and erode trust. But a new study from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests rumor-mongering can have positive outcomes such as helping us police bad behavior, prevent exploitation and lower stress. "Gossip gets a bad rap, but we're finding evidence that it plays a critical role in the maintenance of social…
1 min read
This Is What Your Relationships Are Worth In Dollars:
ving a better social life can be worth as much as an additional $131,232 a year in terms of life satisfaction: There is substantial evidence in the psychology and sociology literature that social relationships promote happiness for the individual. Yet the size of their impacts remains largely unknown. This paper explores the use of shadow pricing method to estimate the monetary values of the satisfaction with life gained by an increase in the frequency of interaction with friends, relatives, and…
3 minutes
Why do grandmom’s cookies taste better than anyone else’s?
tentions change how we experience things. Kindness does soothe pain and increase pleasure. Via Eurekalert: A nurse's tender loving care really does ease the pain of a medical procedure, and grandma's cookies really do taste better, if we perceive them to be made with love - suggests newly published research by a University of Maryland psychologist. The findings have many real-world applications, including in medicine, relationships, parenting and business. "The way we read another persons intentions changes our physical experience…
1 min read
