Will I Ever Find Love?: What you should look for in a marriage partner
what you should look for in a marriage partner? Marriage isn't all fun and games. In the past I've posted about marriage making you poorer, killing sex drive, and making you fat. So if you're gonna do it, do it right. But how do you know who to marry? Should you just trust your feelings or pick the person who "looks good on paper"? Luckily, science has answers for us: Will I Ever Find Love? Step 1: Find someone…
5 minutes
Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals?:
s. But why? A study says that conservatives' ideology gives them a buffer against negative feelings about economic inequality which liberals don't get from their own beliefs: In this research, we drew on system-justification theory and the notion that conservative ideology serves a palliative function to explain why conservatives are happier than liberals. Specifically, in three studies using nationally representative data from the United States and nine additional countries, we found that right-wing (vs. left-wing) orientation is indeed associated with…
1 min read
Do the poor pay more for things than the average American?:
s. Prices are often higher in poor areas and with reduced access to cars, comparison shopping is harder: This research undertakes a carefully designed and detailed empirical study to gain insights into (1) the extent of price differentials between wealthy and poor neighborhoods; (2) what induces such differentials, especially the nature and intensity of competitive environments, including mass merchandisers like Wal‐Mart; and (3) their relative impacts. It finds a price differential of about 10%–15% for everyday items. Even after controlling…
1 min read
Do we reward the best people or the most visible people?:
dly, it's the more visible people: In his widely reprinted paper "On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B," Kerr argued that vividness was one of the major reasons for distorted rewards. Using both archival and survey data, the present paper directly tests Kerr's proposal by investigating whether, how, and why highly visible behaviors are over-rewarded and less visible, but similarly (or more) important behaviors are under-rewarded. The National Basketball Association (NBA) was chosen as the domain of…
2 minutes
Wanna run a marathon? Maybe you already did and don’t remember:
rathons are incredibly stressful on the body; so much so that they can temporarily impair memory at the same level as brain damage: We tested the idea that real-world situations, such as the highly strenuous exercise involved in marathon running, that impose extreme physical demands on an individual may result in neurohormonal changes that alter the functioning of memory. Marathon runners were given implicit and explicit memory tasks before or immediately after they completed a marathon. Runners tested immediately upon…
1 min read
What would happen if economists were NFL and MLB coaches?:
nneth Kovash and Steven Levitt (co-author of Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics) think pitchers throw too many fastballs and football teams don't pass enough, for starters: Game theory makes strong predictions about how individuals should behave in two player, zero sum games. When players follow a mixed strategy, equilibrium payoffs should be equalized across actions, and choices should be serially uncorrelated. Laboratory experiments have generated large and systematic deviations from the minimax predictions. Data gleaned from real-world settings have been more consistent…
2 minutes
Here’s why you buy so much stuff you don’t need:
rns out materialism is pretty tightly correlated with self-esteem: We examine age differences in materialism with children and adolescents 8–18 years old. In study 1, we find materialism increases from middle childhood to early adolescence and declines from early to late adolescence. Further, we find that age differences are mediated by changes in self‐esteem occurring from middle childhood through adolescence. In study 2, we prime self‐esteem to obtain further evidence of a causal link between self‐esteem and materialism. As expected,…
1 min read
How to find a place to live where you’ll be happy:
ve to a rich neighborhood in a poor county: The relative income or income status hypothesis implies that people should be happier when they live among the poor. Findings on neighborhood effects suggest, however, that living in a poorer neighborhood reduces, not enhances, a person's happiness. Using data from the American National Election Study linked to income data from the U.S. census, the authors find that Americans tend to be happier when they reside in richer neighborhoods (consistent with neighborhood…
1 min read
