What would most people choose: sex or cake?
bsp; 32% of singles would give up sex for a year vs. their favorite food. 28% of people in committed relationships said the same. Via MSNBC: About 32 percent of singles say that if forced to choose, they’d rather give up sex for a year than their favorite food. More women would take that path to satisfaction, with 39 percent choosing food over sex, while only 16 percent of single men would do the same. And it’s not just singles…
2 minutes
Do shifty eyes really mean you’re lying?
bsp; Shifty eyes just mean you're accessing your long term memory, not that you're lying. Via MSNBC: Psychology professor Howard Ehrlichman of Queens College, City University of New York, has been studying eye movement since the 1970s. In a recent article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, he reviewed some of his work, including recent findings, and argued there’s robust evidence that I’m not being shifty-eyed at all. I’m just thinking. More specifically, I'm accessing long-term memory. So why do…
1 min read
Should you work harder on simple problems or complex problems?
bsp; You may want to spend less time analyzing complex problems and just sleep on it. Via Harvard Program on Negotiation: Ap Dijksterhuis and other researchers at the University of Amsterdam offer this somewhat surprising advice: fight the temptation to read through the proposals one last time, and don’t run any more numbers. Their studies suggest that you actually may make a better decision by putting the proposals aside, doing an anagram puzzle, and following your intuition. Not only were…
1 min read
Are there atheists in foxholes?
bsp; There's still some debate. It does, however, look like in the face of death we all reach for something greater than ourselves or become more open to supernatural possibilities. Via Pacific Standard: Are there atheists in foxholes? That timeless question... is a shorthand way of asking whether, when confronted by their own mortality, even nonbelievers’ thoughts turn to God. Research published earlier this year tentatively concluded that they do. But a new study, conducted by scholars from three countries,…
2 minutes
What’s the best way to set a goal?
bsp; Via Nine Things Successful People Do Differently: 1) Write down your goal. Example A: My goal is to get ahead at work. Example B: My goal is to lose some weight. 2) Ask yourself, “How will I know when I have succeeded?” Describe the moment when you will know that you have reached your goal. Example A: I will know I have gotten ahead when my boss tells me that I’m getting promoted to director. Example B: I will…
2 minutes
Who is influential online?
bsp; Via The Boston Globe: Facebook fascinates social scientists—as well as advertisers—as a real-time, trackable network of influences. So who really influences whom? Using a Facebook application for discussing the movie industry, researchers at New York University arranged it so that automated messages of users’ activities were randomly sent to users’ friends, to see who was more influential in generating new users and which friends were more susceptible to influence. Older users, it turns out, were generally more influential, especially…
1 min read
Is the US so successful because of… air conditioning?
bsp; Brad Plumer has a great piece in the Washington Post analyzing the productivity boost the US receives from AC and its possible environmental consequences: ...there are even studies suggesting that extreme heat can strangle a country’s livelihood. A 2008 study by three economists, led by Northwestern’s Benjamin Jones, found that poorer countries experience a plunge in economic output during hotter-than-average years. It’s not just that drought kills off crops. Industrial output declines, and political unrest becomes more unlikely. What’s…
2 minutes
Why does time seem to slow down during car accidents and scary situations?
bsp; When we're afraid, our brain attempts to remember as much about the situation as possible so we can avoid things associated with it in the future. Because of this, our perception is distorted and life seems to slow down. Via The Courage Quotient: How Science Can Make You Braver: Chess Stetson, Matthew Fiesta, and Eagleman believe that this sensation of time slowing is a by-product of the fact that our brains simply remember more information during traumatic experiences. Just…
2 minutes
