Noted Elsewhere Index
What's A Conference Championship Worth?
12 May 08 When a male university graduate's former team wins its conference championship, his donations to the school and to its athletic program go up, according to research by economists from Princeton and Stanford universities. This is not true for female graduates, they found. The researchers also report that male graduates whose teams were successful when they were students also make larger donations than others. (National Bureau of Economic Research)
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Downbeat Boomers
5 May 08 Baby boomers, at least those born from 1945-1960, "have experienced less happiness on average" than Americans born earlier or later, according to a study of 33 years of survey data by a University of Chicago sociologist. The study also reported that old people generally are happier than young ones, and that average happiness levels have changed little in recent decades.
(American Sociological Review)
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Forgive and Don't Forget
28 Apr 08 People who decided they could forgive the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists, as well as those who decided they could not, have less distress than people who cannot make up their minds, according to University of Denver researchers. Their study of college students suggests that "it may not decrease distress for individuals to change from an anti-forgiveness view and work toward a pro-forgiveness attitude."
(Anxiety, Stress and Coping)
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Do Violent Movies Take a Bite Out of Crime?
21 Apr 08 Violent movies "deter almost 1,000 assaults on an average weekend," according to two University of California researchers who report that violent crime declines in the days after large numbers of people watch bloodthirsty flicks. One reason, they say, is "voluntary incapacitation" – that is, potential criminals are spending those hours watching violent movies instead of drinking and assaulting others. They say their findings do not contradict laboratory experiments linking violent movies with heightened aggression levels.
(National Bureau of Economic Research)
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The Look of Success
14 Apr 08 People are able to pick out successful business leaders from those who aren't so successful just by looking at their photographs. College students were showed photos male chief executives of Fortune 1000 companies and asked to rate each pictured leader in terms of his or her percieved competence, dominance, likeability, maturity and trustworthiness. Researchers found that the higher the ratings of the CEO's photo, the more profitable the company.
(Psychological Science)
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Obesity Is Not Contagious
8 Apr 08 Are people more likely to become obese because their friends are? So said a recent headline-grabbing report in the New England Journal of Medicine, which led to newspaper stories suggesting that people find thin friends if they want to keep their weight in check. But a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston working paper challenges the claim that obesity is contagious among friends: "Our evaluation suggests that the spread of obesity is related to the environment in which individuals live." If two friends both become obese, the paper says, a more likely explanation for it is an outside cause, such as a new fast-food restaurant in their neighborhood.
(Federal Reserve Bank of Boston)
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Playboys
1 Apr 08 Boys play more than girls and study less while girls spend more time doing household chores and less time watching television, according to a University of Michigan research team that studied how children between the ages of 6 and 17 spend their time. Girls spend an average of 6 hours a week playing, compared to 10 hours a week for boys. Girls also spend nearly an hour more a week studying while boys spend a hour more watching television.
(University of Michigan)
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The Politics of Shame
24 Mar 08 Shame is as effective as door-to-door canvassing in motivating people to vote, according to political scientists who compared turnout among 80,000 Michigan households that were sent one of four mailings encouraging them to vote in an August 2006 election. One said voting is a civic duty, another said researchers would study their turnout based on public records, and a third listed whether voters in the household had voted in the past. The fourth--and most effective--listed whether voters in the household and nearby homes had voted in the past--and promised a follow-up mailing.
(American Political Science Review)
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Ugly Schools Encourage Truancy
17 Mar 08 Students who attend well-maintained and physically attractive schools are less likely to engage in problem behaviors such as truancy, drinking and marijuana use than those who go to run-down or otherwise unattractive schools, controlling for other factors associated with student conduct. The effect of an attractive physical environment was greater for 10th grade students than for 8th or 12th graders, researchers from the University of Toledo and the University of Michigan report in the journal Environment and Behavior. (Environment and Behavior)
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Working Teens More Likely to Smoke
10 Mar 08 Many teenagers who get a job also get a cigarette habit. Rand Corp. researchers report that teens who start working when they're sophomores or juniors in high school are at least three times more likely to begin smoking than their classmates who didn't work. They speculated that working teens may use cigarettes to relax during breaks or to relieve the stress of balancing work and school. (Rand Corp.)
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Don’t Tell Them You’re Arrogant
3 Mar 08 Speakers who preface an arrogant statement by saying, "I don't mean to sound arrogant, but…" are more likely to be thought arrogant than those who don't use such a disclaimer. The same thing is true for "laziness and selfishness disclaimers," according to researchers at Eastern Washington University. Disclaimers, they say, "increase an audience's expectations that the speaker will say something consistent with the unwanted trait."
(Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin)
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Brainy and Broke?
25 Feb 08 Brainy people have higher incomes than people with lower IQ scores, but do not have fewer money problems, according to an Ohio State University researcher. The research from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, published in the journal Intelligence, "shows that each point increase in IQ test scores raises income by between $234 and $616 per year." Furthermore, "higher IQ scores sometimes increase the probability of being in financial difficulty," such as going bankrupt or having trouble paying bills.
(Intelligence.)
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Lack of Sleep Makes You Crazy
19 Feb 08 Results from a brain imaging study suggest that a good night's sleep helps keep you on an emotional even keel and helps you cope with the next day's emotional challenge. But lack of sleep has exactly the opposite effect: It boosts the part of the brain associated with depression, anxiety and other psychiatric disorders, report a team of researchers at the University of California at Berkeley in a recent issue of Current Biology.
(Current Biology)
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More Evidence that Americans Don’t Understand Percentages
11 Feb 08 People believe that a product costing $1,000 is a better deal than its $1,500 competitor if the pricier item is described as being 50% more expensive than if they are told the $1,000 product is 33% less expensive than its rival. Test subjects also said they would be more willing to buy the less expensive item when its more expensive counterpart was described as being 50% more costly, researchers report in the latest issue of Journal of Consumer Psychology.
(Journal of Consumer Psychology)
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Wine Drinkers Get What they Pay For
31 Jan 08
People who believe they are drinking an expensive wine enjoy it more than if they think the same wine costs less. Researchers used an MRI to scan the brains of 11 test subjects while they sipped the same wine poured from separate bottles that bore price tags of $45 and $5. (In fact, the actual retail price was $5.) The test tipplers reported that the faux high-priced wine tasted better while the brain MRI revealed that the wine poured from the high-priced bottle apeared to trigger pleasant sensations, the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
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Teaching and Doing
18 Jan 08 Who said those who can't, teach? When it comes to business, those that teach, can. Two Depaul University researchers studied more than 200 business professors who joined the ranks of senior management and found that their companies did significantly better than similar firms with no former academics in top jobs. (Academy of Management Perspectives )
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You Can Be Too Happy
14 Jan 08 Don't worry, be happy. But if you want to be rich, it may pay not to be too happy. A team of psychologists analyzed national survey data on happiness and found that the happiest people were the most successful in developing close relationships with others and engaged in more volunteer work than other Americans. But people who were slightly less happy "are the most successful in terms of income, education and political participation," they report in the December issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science.
( Perspectives on Psychological Science)
Journal abstract
Succeed Early, Die Young
2 Jan 08 Researchers at Wayne State University found that players who make it to the big leagues at a younger-than-average age don't live as long as other players. "Every year a baseball player debuted before the average age of 23.6 years was associated with life span being shortened by 0.24 years," they reported in the journal Death Studies. The results support the hypothesis that "earlier achievement is associated with earlier death," a phenomenon detected in other walks of life.
(Death Studies)
Journal abstract
Sinister Sisters and Drama Mammas
17 Dec 07 The holiday season can bring out the very worst in families. "Going home for the holidays? If so, you may witness versions of gossip, exclusion and other hurtful behaviors," says Cheryl Dellasega, a Penn State University professor, in her new book, "Forced to Be Family: A Guide for Living with Sinister Sisters, Drama Mamas, and Infuriating In-Laws." Among her recommendations for keeping the holiday peaceful: Avoid too much food, alcohol--and togetherness.
(Pennsylvania State University)
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Friends Don't Let Friends Get the Flu
10 Dec 07 College students are more likely to get a flu shot if their friends do, and often visit the same clinic at the same time, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston working paper. The decision to get a flu shot reflects "learning from peers," it says, but "peer pressure and companionship" may determine where they get vaccinated. (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston)
Full paper
Talking Makes You Smarter
3 Dec 07 Spending 10 minutes a day chatting with another person improves your memory and boosts performance on cognitive tests, according to a new University of Michigan study. In one experiment, volunteers discussed a social issue for 10 minutes and then took tests designed to measure their mental processing speed and memory. Researchers found the scores of those in the discussion group increased more than those in a control group that watched a 10-minute clip from "Seinfeld." (University of Michigan)
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Summer Makes You Dumber
27 Nov 07 Researchers have known for years that kids forget a lot of what they learned the previous school year over summer vacation. Now sociologists from Johns Hopkins say poor children are more likely to be hurt by the summertime slump than their more-privileged classmates. That's because disadvantaged kids are significantly less likely to acquire useful knowledge when they aren't in the classroom, creating a knowledge gap between them and their more advantaged peers that likely grows wider with every passing summer. (American Sociological Review)
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Good Morning
19 Nov 07 Morning people are likely to be more emotionally stable than their "night owl" counterparts, claims a Yale psychologist and his colleagues. These researchers administered psychological tests to 279 college students and found that those who reported they were most active and alert in the morning also were more agreeable and conscientious than those who felt more energized at night. (Personality and Individual Differences)
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What are Friends For?
12 Nov 07 Selfish people tend to have selfish friends, and generous people have generous ones. An experiment among Harvard University students found that altruistic people are treated better by their friends, though they do not have more friends than selfish people do. (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston)
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Baby, or Not?
12 Nov 07 A growing share of women in their 40s do not have children, even as Americans have become more accepting of childlessness. Now comes evidence of a gender gap in attitudes. Two University of Florida scholars find that women are more likely than men to "hold positive attitudes about childlessness." (University of Florida)
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Myths About Asian American Students
12 Nov 07 The idea that Asian Americans have a smooth path to college is questioned by a new report, which finds they are more likely than freshmen overall to come from low-income homes and to believe themselves in need of catch-up work. (UCLA)
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Does Sex Sell Cars?
Stanford University researchers showed erotic photographs to 15 heterosexual men, and then gave them $10 with which to gamble. The men took more chances with their money after seeing the erotic images than after viewing neutral photos of office supplies or unpleasant ones of snakes and spiders. Brain scans showed that an area of the brain associated with anticipation of reward was activated when the men looked at the erotic pictures, but not when other images were viewed. The researchers say this points to a link between supposedly irrelevant stimuli and financial decision-making.
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