Does trying to look smart make us seem stupid?
llow @bakadesuyo Using bigger, more complex words made people appear stupider, not smarter: Most texts on writing style encourage authors to avoid overly-complex words. However, a majority of undergraduates admit to deliberately increasing the complexity of their vocabulary so as to give the impression of intelligence. This paper explores the extent to which this strategy is effective. Experiments 1–3 manipulate complexity of texts and find a negative relationship between complexity and judged intelligence. This relationship held regardless of the quality…
1 min read
What can we learn from Sun Tzu’s Art of War?
llow @bakadesuyo I recently re-read Sun Tzu's Art of War. Most of us don't have that much use for instructions on "the 5 ways to attack enemy encampments with fire", "proper placement of chariots" or the nitty-gritty of river warfare but the book's advice on strategy is so famous it's become a cliche. Here are my notes, organized by what I felt to be the biggest takeaway principles/subjects: "All warfare is based on deception." Hence, when able to attack, we must seem…
8 minutes
Are funny people smarter than average?
s: To explain the pervasive role of humor in human social interaction and among mating partner preferences, Miller (2000a) proposed that intentional humor evolved as an indicator of intelligence. To test this, we looked at the relationships among rater-judged humor, general intelligence, and the Big Five personality traits in a sample of 185 collegeage students (115 women, 70 men). General intelligence positively predicted rater-judged humor, independent of the Big Five personality traits. Extraversion also predicted rater judged humor, although to…
1 min read
Is there really such thing as being “accident-prone”?
s: Accident related health problems have been suggested to cluster within persons. This phenomenon became known as accident proneness and has been a subject of many discussions. This study provides an overview of accident proneness. Therefore, 79 articles with empirical data on accident rates were identified from databases Embase, Medline, and Psychinfo. First, definitions of accidents varied highly, but most studies focused on accidents resulting in injuries requiring medical attention. Second, operationalisations of accident proneness varied highly. Studies categorised individuals…
1 min read
What are the top 10 reasons for accepting or rejecting a “booty call”?
llow @bakadesuyo Vaughan Bell (via @NoahWG) covers a study on booty calls here. There's a September '09 expanded discussion with the study's authors that gives more insight on what they theorize might be the differing motivations for men and women: “For men… a booty call offers sexual access at a low, although not minimal, cost. For women, a booty call relationship offers more affection than a one-night stand,” the authors wrote. At the same time, an existing platonic friendship that…
2 minutes
Is there a time to give up hope?
ving up hope makes sense when things seem very unlikely to get better and you decide you want to be happy. Hope impedes adaptation and adapting is one of the keys to happiness. Via Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average: After all, most of us dread finality; we much prefer changeable outcomes. We like escape hatches and will often pay more for the…
2 minutes
Is the planet getting stupider?
's possible. Women are more responsible for children's IQ than men are. Smarter women are less likely to have children and when they do, have fewer offspring. Via The Intelligence Paradox: Why the Intelligent Choice Isn't Always the Smart One: Genes determine about 80% of the variance in adult intelligence. On average, more intelligent parents beget more intelligent children. And the genes that influence general intelligence are thought to be located on the X chromosomes... It means that boys inherit…
2 minutes
Does confidence have any relationship to actual skill?
t necessarily. Confidence is also a personality trait. Confidence alone does not predict accuracy. Researchers were able to predict how confident someone would be about a test score just by noting how confident they were about a completely unrelated previous test score. Via The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us: Remarkably, just by knowing how confident someone was on the first test, it was possible to predict how confident they would be on the second test. Of those people…
3 minutes
