What leads us to trust people?:
e interesting thing is that it's not consistent for different relationships. Turns out it's one reason for new friends, another reason for old friends and a third reason for ones in the middle: Prior meta-analytic evidence has indicated no association between relationship length and perceived trustworthiness. Viewing trustors as information processors, the authors propose a model in which relationship length, although having no direct effect on perceived trustworthiness, moderates the association between perceived trustworthiness and the basis on which people…
1 min read
Are “feminine” or “un-feminine” women more likely to be sexually harassed?
u often hear "rape isn't about sex, it's about power." Turns out harassment works along the same lines: In 3 studies, the author tested 2 competing views of sexual harassment: (a) It is motivated primarily by sexual desire and, therefore, is directed at women who meet feminine ideals, and (b) it is motivated primarily by a desire to punish gender-role deviants and, therefore, is directed at women who violate feminine ideals. Study 1 included male and female college students (N…
1 min read
How do we value irreplaceable objects?:
ppose an individual loses an irreplaceable object and someone else is at fault. How much should he be compensated? Normatively, compensation should equal the value (utility) to the victim. Our experiments demonstrate that compensation decisions often ignore value and are instead based on cost (how much the victim originally paid for the item) except when cost is zero. For example, we found that people awarded $200 for a destroyed item worth $500 to the victim if the cost was $200;…
1 min read
Do doctors who fear lawsuits work less?:
ems like if you're having trouble getting an appointment with your doctor it's because too many of your neighbors are making appointments with their lawyers: A new study in the Journal Of Law And Economics suggests that the number of hours physicians work each week is influenced by their fear of malpractice lawsuits. The study found that doctors cut back their workload by almost two hours each week when the expected liability risk increases by 10 percent. The study…
2 minutes
Are couples who say ‘we’ better at resolving conflicts?:
parently, pronouns matter a lot more than you might think in a relationship: People often complain about those seemingly smug married couples who constantly refer to themselves as "we." But a new study from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that spouses who use "we-ness" language are better able to resolve conflicts than those who don't. UC Berkeley researchers analyzed conversations between 154 middle-aged and older couples about points of disagreement in their marriages and found that those who used…
1 min read
Most Popular Posts:
What does English sound like to foreigners? 2) Things you didn't know about sex 3) How many people over 25 are still virgins? 4) What you should look for in a marriage partner 5) How important is physical attractiveness to a marriage? 6) What would men do if they didn't have to impress women? 7) How to guarantee your luggage won't be lost or stolen next time you fly. 8) What is the hardest language? 9) How to quickly…
1 min read
Things you didn’t know about sex:
ah, I thought that might get your attention... What's the chance you will have sex or have a relationship with someone from a speed-dating event? How do women's tastes vary in short term vs long term partners? What's the best way for a woman to show interest in a man? Can a quick glance tell you how sexual a woman is? Who ends up in the emergency room because of sex toys? What percentage of sex shop patrons are women?…
2 minutes
Why do we sometimes feel smarter than everybody else and sometimes dumber?
ople believe that they are better than others on easy tasks and worse than others on difficult tasks. In previous attempts to explain these better-than-average and worse-than-average effects, researchers have invoked bias and motivation as causes. In this article, the authors develop a more parsimonious account, the differential information explanation, in which it is assumed only that people typically have better information about themselves than they do about others. When one's own performance is exceptional (either good or bad), it…
1 min read
