Search (2503)
What’s the right level of trust?
wish I knew the answer because this study says it's extremely important to get it right: A vast literature has investigated the relationship between trust and aggregate economic performance. We investigate the relationship between individual trust and individual economic performance. We find that individual income is hump-shaped in a measure of intensity of trust beliefs available in the European Social Survey. We show that heterogeneity of trust beliefs in the population, coupled with the tendency of individuals to extrapolate…
2 minutes
Digest of Digests:
is will be the digest of digests (how meta can we get?) Might want to bookmark this one. I'll keep updating this post as I add more digests. So far we have: Things you didn't know about happiness Things you didn't know about sex How to quickly and easily improve your life Things you didn't know about sports Things you didn't know about lies, liars and detecting lies Things you didn't know about negotiation, persuasion and influence Things you didn't…
1 min read
How to quickly and easily become a better person
end more time out in nature: Four studies examined the effects of nature on valuing intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations. Intrinsic aspirations reflected prosocial and other-focused value orientations, and extrinsic aspirations predicted self-focused value orientations. Participants immersed in natural environments reported higher valuing of intrinsic aspirations and lower valuing of extrinsic aspirations, whereas those immersed in non-natural environments reported increased valuing of extrinsic aspirations and no change of intrinsic aspirations. Three studies explored experiences of nature relatedness and autonomy as underlying…
1 min read
Are baseball umpires racist?
ether they know it or not, seems they might be: We explore how umpires’ racial/ethnic preferences are expressed in their evaluation of Major League Baseball pitchers. Controlling for umpire, pitcher, batter and catcher fixed effects and many other factors, strikes are more likely to be called if the umpire and pitcher match race/ethnicity. This effect only exists where there is little scrutiny of umpires’ behavior – in ballparks without computerized systems monitoring umpires’ calls, at poorly attended games, and when…
1 min read
You know what has the power to dramatically improve women’s lives? Brazilian soap operas.
rlier I posted about how satellite TV decreased domestic violence in India and improved female autonomy. It seems that Brazilian soap operas might have similar effects. This paper focuses on fertility choices in Brazil, a country where soap operas (novelas) portray families that are much smaller than in reality, to study the effects of television on individual behavior. Using Census data for the period 1970-1991, the paper finds that women living in areas covered by the Globo signal have significantly…
2 minutes
Do men’s sexual tastes broaden when they’re stressed?
s: Men are drawn to a wider range of women when they are feeling stressed out, according to research into the psychology of sexual attraction. People are usually attracted to partners with similar facial features to their own, but after a brief but stressful experience, men's preferences changed to include a wider variety of women, the study found. Relaxed men who took part in the study rated women on average 14% less appealing if they looked very different from themselves…
1 min read
Books that influenced me the most:
e internet's most precious natural resource, Tyler Cowen, asked bloggers to list the 10 books that influenced them the most, so in no particular order, here goes: Meditations A Humument Getting Things Done Creativity Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Guns, Germs, and Steel The Selfish Gene The Prince The Outsider Strangers to Ourselves Other lists are here. Join over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You…
1 min read
The “Stranded-on-a-Desert-Island” Series: If I could only follow 5 people on Twitter:
in over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More Successful How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior Expert
1 min read
