Do experiences always produce more happiness than material goods?
llow @bakadesuyo ...experiences do lead to more happiness when the purchase goes well. "However, for negative purchases, bad experiences lead to more lasting unhappiness than do bad material purchases. Experiences 'stay with' us longer than material purchases, whether good or bad. They simply have more lasting power over our happiness. Imagine that really terrible play or restaurant meal—it is tougher to recover from picking the wrong experience than from picking the wrong thing." Source Follow me on Twitter here or get updates…
1 min read
Does the type of pornography a man looks at affect his fertility?
ere is increasing evidence from non-human animals that males adjust their ejaculate expenditure according to the risk of sperm competition. In this study we show that, after controlling for lifestyle factors known to influence semen quality, human males viewing images depicting sperm competition had a higher percentage of motile sperm in their ejaculates... These adjustments conform to the expectations of game theoretical models that male fitness will be maximized when subject to the competition that arises between sperm when females…
2 minutes
Which people in our lives do we really value the most?
llow @bakadesuyo This paper studies the mental distress caused by bereavement. The largest emotional losses are from the death of a spouse; the second-worst in severity are the losses from the death of a child; the third-worst is the death of a parent. The paper explores how happiness regression equations might be used in tort cases to calculate compensatory damages for emotional harm and pain-and-suffering. We examine alternative well-being variables, discuss adaptation, consider the possibility that bereavement affects someone’s marginal…
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Which athletes are more likely to choke: home team or visitors?
e home team: ...The evidence suggests that the social environment has an impact on the performance of individuals. In particular, players of the home team are more likely to choke. This is a very robust finding in the data. It provides evidence against the social support hypothesis, but in support of the hypothesis that positive public expectations induce choking... Source: "Do Professionals Choke Under Pressure?" from IZA Discussion Paper No. 1905, December 2005 Join 45K+ readers. Get a free weekly update…
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Does Ramadan help the stock market?
llow @bakadesuyo ...the average stock market returns in predominantly Muslim countries were historically almost nine times higher during Ramadan compared to other months of the lunar calendar. Jedrzej Bialkowski (University of Christchurch, New Zealand), Ahmad Etebari (University of New Hampshire, United States) and Tomasz Piotr Wisniewski (University of Leicester, UK) also discovered that, at the same time, the volatility of these markets declined. These conclusions are based on a sample of 14 stock markets located in countries where Muslims constitute…
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How can you easily increase your ambition? How can you easily increase your satisfaction?
rsuing a series of progressive (e.g., professional) goals that form a goal ladder often leads to a trade-off between moving up to a more advanced level and repeating the same goal level. This article investigates how monitoring one's current goal in terms of remaining actions versus completed actions influences the desire to move up the goal ladder. The authors propose that a focus on remaining (vs. completed) actions increases the motivation to move up to a more advanced level, whereas…
2 minutes
Does being happy help you learn? Are there situations where being angry can help?
two experimental studies of two-party information sharing, we demonstrate that affective state plays a role in the knowledge-transfer process. Study 1 (N = 108 MBA students) found that affective state has a larger impact on those in need of knowledge (“receivers”) than on those in possession of knowledge (“senders”), with elated/happy receivers more likely than angry/frustrated receivers to absorb and act on new information. Study 2 (N = 180 undergraduates) replicated this finding and also demonstrated that having receivers…
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My first piece in Wired is now online:
Wired piece on the science behind positive thinking is here. Hope you enjoy it, Eric You should follow me on Twitter here. You can also subscribe to the blog's feed or follow on Facebook. If you want to help support the blog, please do your Amazon shopping via this link. Here are the site's most popular posts of all time.
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