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nks I posted on Twitter this week: Is it "duct tape" or "duck tape"? (RT @desireewilliams) Would a glass of water in space freeze or boil? What you really wanted to know about brain aneurysms but were afraid to ask Can doctors refuse to treat patients based on their political beliefs? I don't need to see this, thank you. NYT infographic on where immigrants are from (and what they do) (RT @Slate) Positive effects of engaged workplaces. (RT @Richard_Florida) I'm…
1 min read
Things you didn’t know about marriage and relationships
at you should look for in a marriage partner Does marriage make you poorer? Is a marriage worth more to a man or a woman? By how much? How important is physical attractiveness to a happy marriage? Does Marriage Kill Sex Drive? Does parenthood make marriage worse? Is marriage a good idea for handsome men? In India, More Women Demand Toilets Before Marriage They may legalize polygamy in Russia. The women are asking for it. Can game theory explain the…
2 minutes
Do candy cigarettes turn kids into smokers?
jective. We examined whether childhood candy cigarette use was associated with adult tobacco smoking. Methods. 25,887 U.S. adults from the Harris Poll Online (HPOL) were surveyed about current smoking status from November 2005 to May 2006. Respondents were randomly assigned to a yes/no item or a dose–response scale to assess candy cigarette use. Data were weighted to reflect the U.S. adult population. Results. 26.4% of respondents reported current smoking and 29.4% reported former smoking. Candy cigarette use was reported by…
1 min read
How to quickly and easily make people like you more:
mic people: Mimicry has benefits for people in social interactions. However, evidence regarding the consequences of mimicry is incomplete. First, research on mimicry has particularly focused on effects of being mimicked. Secondly, on the side of the mimicker evidence is correlational or lacks real interaction data. The present study investigated effects for mimickers and mimickees in face-to-face interaction. Feelings towards the immediate interaction partner and the interaction in which mimicry takes place were measured after an interaction between two participants…
4 minutes
Why are people cynical? What can be done about it?
ople tend to grossly underestimate the trustworthiness of other people. We tested whether this cynicism grows out of an asymmetry in the feedback people receive when they decide to trust others. When people trust others, they painfully learn when other people prove to be untrustworthy; however, when people refrain from trusting others, they fail to learn of instances when the other person would have honored their trust. Participants saw short videos of other people and had to decide whether to…
1 min read
Do good moods make people less trusting?
person's mood may determine how much they rely on subtle – or not so subtle -- cues when evaluating whether to trust someone," said Robert Lount, author of the study and assistant professor of management and human resources at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business. In five separate experiments, Lount found that people in a positive mood were more likely than those in a neutral mood to follow cues or stereotypes when determining whether they should trust someone.…
1 min read
How to quickly and easily add meaning to your life:
flect on the different ways your life could have gone. Believing that the way things did work out was "meant to be" and appreciating the benefits of that journey both can add a deeper feeling of meaning to your life. Four experiments explored whether 2 uniquely human characteristics—counterfactual thinking (imagining alternatives to the past) and the fundamental drive to create meaning in life—are causally related. Rather than implying a random quality to life, the authors hypothesized and found that counterfactual…
1 min read
For a healthy relationship, should cohabiting couples have more or less sex than married couples?
ior research found that lower sexual frequency and satisfaction were associated with higher rates of divorce, but little research had examined the role of sexual activity in the dissolution of cohabiting unions. We drew upon social exchange theory to hypothesize why sexual frequency is more important in cohabitation: (a) cohabitors' lower costs of finding sexual alternatives, (b) cohabitors' lower barriers to ending the relationship in the form of union-specific economic and noneconomic capital, and (c) cohabitors' higher expectations for sexual…
1 min read
