Noted Elsewhere Index
Feeling Bad to Have Fun
4 Jan 10 Sports fans enjoy victory more if their favorite team had played badly or was in danger of losing at some point during the game. Researchers at Ohio State University studied fan reactions to college and professional football games and found that even die-hard supporters enjoy a suspenseful game more than one in which their team was never in danger of losing. (Ohio State University)
Read a summary
Loneliness is Contageous
28 Dec 09 Lonely people tend to cut their few remaining social ties as they become more socially isolated. "But before they do, they tend to transmit the same feeling of loneliness to their remaining friends, starting the cycle anew" according to a team of psychologists writing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In this way, "our social fabric can fray at the edges, like a yarn that comes loose at the end of a crocheted sweater," they concluded. (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)
Read the article
Managers’ Race Affects Hiring
15 Dec 09 White, Asian and Hispanic managers hire more whites and fewer blacks than black managers do. Using personnel data from a large U.S. retail chain, economists found that when a black manager is replaced by a white, Asian or Hispanic manager, the percentage of newly hired blacks falls from 21 to 17 percent, and the proportion of whites hired rises from 60 to 64 percent. The effect is even stronger for stores located in the South, the researchers found.
(Journal of Labor Economics)
Read a summary
A Generation of Renters
7 Dec 09 Why have homeownership rates dropped among Americans ages 25-44? According to a Federal Reserve Bank working paper, most of the decline in this group from 1980-2000 was due to two factors: rising uncertainty about future earnings and the increasingly older ages at which people first get married. (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago)
Read the working paper
Deadly States
30 Nov 09 States with higher homicide rates also have proportionately more traffic deaths. University of Michigan researcher Michael Sivak found that the homicide rate was 5.7 per 100,000 in the 25 states with the highest traffic fatality rates but 4.8 per 100,000 in the states with the lowest fatality rates. Sivak suspects that the difference is due to higher levels of aggression in the high-homicide, high-traffic fatality states. (University of Michigan)
Read a summary
Football and Domestic Violence
20 Nov 09 Upset losses by the NFL home team "lead to an 8 percent increase in police reports of at-home male-on-female intimate partner violence," according to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper based on law enforcement data on Sundays during football season. An upset win has at best "a small dampening effect" on such violence, according to the paper.
(NBER)
Read the abstract
Women Underrate Job Performance
13 Oct 09 Women managers consistently underestimate how their supervisors rate them while men believe they are doing a slightly better job than their bosses think they are, according to a survey of 251 managers and their supervisors. University of New Mexico researcher Scott N. Taylor found that women underestimated how they bosses evaluated them by about 11 percent. The gender gap was largest for workers aged 50 and older, Taylor reported at a recent meeting of the Academy of Management. (Academy of Management )
Read a summary
Thrifty Young People
29 Sep 09 Young people may actually be doing a better job saving their money than older adults. Consumer researchers Sherman Hanna of Ohio State University and Yoonkyung Yuh studied spending patterns in adults living in more than 17,000 households and factored in their age, expected incomes and how much they could afford to save. Hanna and Yuh found that 61% of 25 year olds were spending less than they were making compared with 56% of those 45 and 55 years old. (Ohio State University)
Read a summary
The Comfort Food Fallacy
24 Sep 09 In times of stress or personal upheaval people are more likely to unfamiliar foods than their old favorites says a University of South Carolina researcher who explored what is known as "the comfort food fallacy." Marketing professor Stacy Wood found that people reporting higher levels of pressure or turmoil were more likely to choose an unfamiliar snack than those who said they were under less strain. (University of Chicago)
Read a summary
Fiscal Opposites Attract
15 Sep 09 Tightwads tend to marry spendthrifts, according to researchers who surveyed more than 1,000 married and single adults. They found that people who typically spend less than they ideally would like to spend are more likely to marry people who generally spend more than they intend. But love doesn't always conquer all--these couples are more likely to argue over money and be less satisfied with their marriages. (University of Michigan)
Read a summary
Blessed with Good Health
1 Sep 09 Religious people throughout the world report they are in better health than the non-religious. A new analysis of Gallup World Poll data from more than 140 countries also found that religious adherents regardless of their faith also say they are less likely to smoke, have more energy and experience fewer aches and pains. "Their social lives and personal behaviors are also healthier; they are more likely to be married, to have supportive friends…[and] are more likely to report being treated with respect," writes Princeton economist Angus Deaton. (National Bureau of Economic Research)
Read the working paper
Unhappy about Smog
20 Aug 09 City residents are are unhappier on unusually smoggy days while clear days brighten their spirits, according to Georgetown University economist Arik Levinson. He analyzed data from two large national surveys that asked thousands of people in cities across the country how happy they were. He then matched federal air quality data from those cities on the dates that respondents were interviewed. "People interviewed on days when air pollution was worse than the local seasonal average report lower levels of happiness," Levinson found. (Georgetown University)
Read the working paper
Short Kids Measure Up
17 Aug 09 Short children are no different than their taller classmates in terms of their overall popularity, social support and opitimism. Shorter kids are also no more likely to suffer symptoms of depression or have behavioral problems, reports a University of Michigan research team that studied 712 sixth-grade boys and girls. (University of Michigan)
Read a summary
Divorce Option Boosts Marriage?
3 Aug 09 The increased availability of joint custody for divorcing couples has "dampened the persistent downturn in marriage," according to a working paper that analyzed the impact of the joint-custody movement that began in the 1970s. The paper, "The Effect of Joint Custody on Marriage and Divorce," suggests that men may be more willing to marry because joint custody is an option. It found no impact on divorce rates. (Institute for the Study of Labor)
Read the working paper
Race and Friendship in College
13 Jul 09 Students who had interracial friendship networks in high school are most likely to have friends of other races as college freshmen, according to a survey taken at an unnamed "highly selective private research university" and published in Sociology of Education. Researchers concluded that having a college roommate of a different race predicts a higher likelihood of having friends of different races, but being in a classroom with students of different races does not. (Sociology of Education)
Read the article
Do Top Teachers Avoid Minority Schools?
29 Jun 09 High-quality teachers tend to leave schools that experience an increase in black students, a Cornell University researcher found. C. Krabo Jackson studied what happened when the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district ended its race-based busing program in 2002, suddenly distributing minority students across the schools. He found that the share of top teachers immediately declined in schools that experienced an increase in minority enrollment, suggesting that teachers moved in anticipation of more black students. (Journal of Labor Economics)
Read a summary
The Alphabet Effect on Charitable Giving
15 Jun 09 People are more likely to make charitable donations if asked personally rather than via email or mail, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper that used real-world data to replicate experimental findings. Volunteer alumni from one university called prospects on an alphabetized list, but did not have time to finish the list. Prospects with names at the front of the alphabet, researchers report, were most likely to donate. (National Bureau of Economic Research)
Read the abstract
Facebook Use and Grades
1 Jun 09 College students who use Facebook spend less time studying and have lower grade point averages than other students, according to researchers at Ohio State University. Overall, Facebook users averaged one to five hours a week studying and had grade point averages between 3.0 and 3.5. In contrast, non-users studied 11 to 15 hours per week and had GPAs of 3.5 to 4.0.
(Ohio State University)
Read a summary
The Happiness Gender Gap, Reversed
26 May 09 Women used to report higher levels of happiness than men in the U.S., but that gender gap has flattened or reversed in the past few years, according to a new NBER working paper by two Wharton School professors that examined three decades of General Social Survey data. This holds true regardless of age, or the marital, employment and fertility status of men and women, they report. (NBER)
Read the abstract
Mom's Bad Job May Hurt Kids
22 May 09 The children of mothers with bad jobs do worse than other children on tests of verbal skills, other relevant factors being equal, according to a University of Michigan sociologist and her research partner. The achievement gap may be due to differences in the quality of the time that moms with bad jobs and other mothers spend with their children. The researchers defined bad jobs by the amount of physical hazards and social stress involved. (University of Michigan)
Read a summary
Does This Survey Make Me Look Fat?
4 May 09 Americans are significantly less likely to define themselves as overweight this decade, compared with a decade earlier, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston working paper that attributes this change to "a generational shift in norms related to body weight." Researchers found that "the declines were particularly pronounced among younger (ages 17–35), normal-weight women and among young-to-middle aged (20–45), overweight men." (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston)
Read the working paper
Working Students and Screen Time
4 May 09 Researchers have long been concerned that high school students who hold paid jobs spend less time on homework. Now, a new analysis using the American Time Use Survey finds that the biggest impact is on "screen time" – that is, TV watching and computer use. "We find that an additional hour of market work reduces time spent on homework by five minutes, sleep by almost 10 minutes, household work by over 11 minutes, and screen time by 24 minutes," researchers report. (U.S. Department of Labor)
Read the working paper
You Look Familiar
20 Apr 09 Voters prefer to support candidates who physically resemble them, according to psychologists from Stanford University. In a series of experiments, the researchers morphed photos of known and unknown candidates with photos of registered voters who participated in the study. Then they asked the participants their voting intentions. "Even in high-profile elections, voters prefer candidates high in facial similarity, but most strongly with unfamiliar candidates," they found. (Public Opinion Quarterly)
Read the article
Immigrants, Skin Color and Earnings
30 Mar 09 Skin color and height affect wages paid to new lawful immigrants to the United States, according to economist Joni Hersch of Vanderbilt University. Using data from a 2003 federally-funded study of recent immigrants, she found that "immigrants with the lightest skin color earn on average 17% more than comparable immigrants with the
darkest skin color." Taller immigrants also earn more, controlling for education, English proficiency, occupation and country of birth.
(Vanderbilt University)
Read the paper
White Line Fever
23 Mar 09 This is a test: How long are the dashed white lines separating traffic lanes on America's roadways? Most people say two feet, and they're wrong: The correct answer is 10 feet. Two psychologists who studied the phenomenon say the results suggest drivers are badly misjudging distances when they drive and may be driving too fast as a result. (Ohio State University)
Read a summary
Is Playing the Lottery Addictive?
16 Mar 09 Stores in Texas that sell a winning state lottery ticket immediately experience a 38% increase in lottery ticket sales for the winning game and stores in the same ZIP code have about a 5% increase. What's more, "after 18 months, roughly 40 percent of the initial shock persists"--evidence that lottery gambling may be addictive, claim two economists. (University of Maryland)
Read the working paper
Drinking Hours
9 Mar 09 One in nine Americans ages 15 and older is a "constant grazer" who spends at least 4 ˝ hours a day eating and drinking, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture analysis of data from time-use diaries. Most of this time is spent drinking while doing other activities, such as socializing or working. Overall, Americans spend an average 2.6 hours a day eating and drinking. (USDA)
Read the analysis
Driving Under the Influence of Stress
2 Mar 09 Did the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks lead to more stress-related traffic fatalities? Researchers at the University of Minnesota suspect that the answer is yes. "Our analyses revealed that in the last 3 months of 2001, the Northeast exhibited a significant increase in traffic fatalities, as well as a significant increase in fatal accidents involving an alcohol- or drug-related citation. Increased stress related to physical proximity to the attacks may explain the increase in traffic fatalities." (Psychological Science)
Read the abstract
Too Close For Comfort
23 Feb 09 Tables spaced too closely in a fine-dining restaurant produce "significantly reduced satisfaction" among patrons, according to Cornell University research conducted in a New York City establishment. However, diners at crowded tables (less than 20 inches apart) did spend more per minute than those at widely spaced tables (more than 36 inches apart), because they did not stay as long. (Cornell University)
Read a summary
Look--But Don't Touch
17 Feb 09 Ohio State University researchers warn shoppers that it's okay to look, "but if you touch you'd better be ready to buy." In a series of experiments people who held a coffee mug longer than a few seconds seemed not only more compelled to outbid others in an auction, but they were also more willing to bid more than the retail price for the item. (Ohio State University)
Read a summary
Race and Speeding Tickets
9 Feb 09 Black and Hispanic police officers are harsher on minority motorists than white motorists when they write speeding tickets, according to an Institute of Labor study based on an analysis of more than 16,000 tickets and warnings in Boston. The study found minority officers were less likely to write a ticket citing a lower speed than the motorist was driving if the driver was black or Hispanic, compared with white drivers.
(The Institute for the Study of Labor)
Read the working paper
Leaders in Their Own Minds
26 Jan 09 Narcissists are natural-born leaders--or at least they think they are. Psychologists found that narcissistic people think of themselves as leaders and tend to take care of leaderless groups. While narcissists think they make good leaders, they don't perform any better once they have control, the researchers reported in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. (Ohio State University)
Read a summary
Gender Balance and Sexual Harassment
5 Jan 09 Women are more likely to be sexually harassed when they are in work groups with similar proportions of men and women, psychologists report in the journal Work and Occupations. That's because opportunities for social contact of all kinds--including unwanted interactions--are greatest in groups with equal numbers of men and women. In these situations, women were more likely to experience taunting, patronizing and "predatory behaviors," they found.
(Ohio State University)
Read a summary
Babes of Winter
29 Dec 08 Research shows that children born in the winter tend to have lower education levels and wages as adults than children born in warmer seasons, but why? A new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, based on data from birth certificates and the Census Bureau, concludes that winter newborns face more obstacles from the start: Their mothers are younger than other mothers, less educated and less likely to be married.
(NBER)
Read the abstract
Is a Good Cry Always Good?
22 Dec 08 Conventional wisdom and some psychological theories suggest that crying has a cathartic effect. But psychologists from the University of South Florida who examined existing studies on crying found no evidence that a good cry consistently makes people feel better. . "The empirical record is at best spotty, with many studies finding no benefits of crying," they wrote in Current Directions in Psychological Science. (Current Directions in Psychological Science)
Read the article
Addicted to Tanning
15 Dec 08 More than one-in-four college students at a large Virginia university reported symptoms of tanning dependence, according to researchers at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. They surveyed 400 students and volunteers at Virginia Commonwealth University and found that 27% displayed symptoms of addiction to tanning similar to those found in alcoholics and drug addicts, including discomfort if they had not tanned recently and difficulty controlling their behavior despite being aware of the risks. (Fox Chase Cancer Center)
Read a summary
Red-faced Men, Green Women
10 Dec 08 Men's skin has a slightly reddish tint while the skin of women tends to be slightly greenish, a team of researchers from Brown University reports in the latest issue of Psychological Science. Researchers detected the subtle color differences by analyzing the amount of red and green pigment in photos of men and women taken in a German laboratory under strictly controlled conditions. (Brown University)
Read a summary
Mothers' Hours
1 Dec 08 Single mothers spend nearly as much time with their children as married mothers do, according to University of Maryland researchers. Often portrayed as time-starved, single mothers put in 83 percent to 90 percent of the child-rearing hours that married women do. The difference of three to five hours per week, researchers say, is almost entirely explained by factors such as employment, education and age.
(University of Maryland)
Read a summary
Musical Preferences and Dreams
24 Nov 08 People who prefer classical music report a higher incidence of dreams in which they are flying while hip-hop fans are more likely to have sexual dreams, according to psychologists at Santa Clara University. Heavy-metal rock aficionados dream about dreaming or that they have fallen unconscious or asleep, they write in the latest Psychological Reports. (Psychological Reports)
Read the abstract
I’m Happy, but You Are Not
17 Nov 08 American and Dutch survey respondents display an intriguing mismatch between their own self-rated happiness and the conditions they think contribute to happiness, according to Rand researchers. Respondents rated their own happiness, and then rated the happiness of people described in vignettes. Respondents "appear to think that marriage does not contribute to life satisfaction when they judge vignettes," the researchers reported. "Yet their own satisfaction is positively influenced by being married." (Rand Corporation)
Read the working paper
The Myth of Cold-hearted Bosses
10 Nov 08 Supervisors whose jobs require them to lay off or fire employees typically do so with great sensitivity and understanding, according to a study of 111 bosses whose jobs required them to perform such "necessary evils." In nearly three-quarters of the cases, both male and female supervisors "remained attuned to...the experience of the target, and to their own humanity," write co-authors Joshua D. Margolis of Harvard Business School and Andrew Molinsky of Brandeis University in the Academy of Management Journal.
(Academy of Management Journal)
Read a summary
Red is for Romance
3 Nov 08 Men say they would be willing to spend more money on a date with a woman wearing a red shirt than on one wearing a blue shirt, according to psychologists at the University of Rochester, who showed their research subjects photographs of a woman that were identical except for the color of her garment. They also found that men who were shown identical photographs of a woman that were framed in different colors gave their highest ratings for attractiveness to those framed in red, they report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
(Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)
Read the abstract
The Scrooge Effect
27 Oct 08 People who heard words or phrases about money or saw images of cash subsequently spent less time helping someone who was in financial distress. They also sat farther away from other people and preferred solitary activities. On the other hand, these test subjects had an "increased desire to take on more work and showed greater persistence in difficult tasks," researchers reported in Current Directions in Psychological Science.
(Association for Psychological Science)
Read a summary
Marriage and Money
21 Oct 08
The more people earn, the more likely they are to get married. So what is the minimum amount that people think they need to earn before they wed? Using data about cohabiting couples from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a University of Wisconsin researcher came up with two numbers: $26,000 and $34,000 in combined earnings. The first figure significantly increases the odds that couples with less than a high school education will marry; the second increases those odds for couples with high school degrees. There is no earnings threshold for those with some college education or a college degree.
(University of Wisconsin)
Read the paper
Is there a Grass Ceiling?
14 Oct 08 The placement of tees in area golf courses is an "uncanny" predictor of how well women fare in management and sales in local companies, a University of New Mexico research team found. Women's tee boxes are, on average, about 50 yards closer to the hole than men's. The greater the distance between tee boxes, the fewer women there are in management and marketing in that geographic locale and the less money those women earn,. The national study is based on data from 455 U.S. golf courses and their surrounding areas.
(Academy of Managment)
Read a summary
Tourism Sparks Growth
6 Oct 08 Metropolitan areas that are popular with tourists have higher population and employment growth than regions with lower tourism, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia research paper. Of several factors examined for their role in population growth, tourism was the third most important predictor during the 1990s. This effect was not driven by leisure-sector employment, the research study said.
(Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)
Read the paper
Blue Laws and Voting
29 Sep 08 Repealing so-called "blue laws" that restrict shopping on Sunday decreases church attendance and voter turnout, according to a research team headed by Alan Gerber of Yale University. Church attendance declined by 5 percent after the repeal of local blue laws, presumably because people went shopping instead of going to church. Voter turnout also fell 1 percentage point, they report in a recent working paper. (NBER)
Read the abstract
Gambling and Suicide
18 Sep 08 Older gamblers who agreed to be barred from casinos are more likely than younger ones to say they did so because they feared they would kill themselves, according to a study published in Psychology and Aging. Nearly 14% of older gamblers gave fear of suicide as a reason they signed up to be excluded for life from casinos in Missouri. The study also confirms other research that people ages 56 and older move from being first-time gamblers to problem gamblers more quickly than younger ones.
(Psychology and Aging)
Read the paper
Children on the Move
15 Sep 08 Among the 38.7 million people who moved in the United States between 2006 and 2007 were 10.4 million children under 18. New Census Bureau data also show that the youngest children are the most likely to move: 20% of those ages 1 to 4 changed residence. The data includes reasons why people moved, distance moved and characteristics of those who moved in 2007. (U.S. Census Bureau)
See the tables
Are Humans Hard-Wired to be Empathetic?
2 Sep 08 Children are naturally inclined to feel empathy for others, according to researchers at the University of Chicago. They conducted brain scans of children aged 7 to 12 and found that viewing photos of someone experiencing pain activated areas of the brain associated with empathy and moral reasoning. The results suggest that empathy is "hard-wired" into the brain and is not entirely the product of parental guidance or other instruction.
(University of Chicago)
Read a summary
Happier World
25 Aug 08 Happiness is increasing around the world, according to survey data collected in 52 countries over the past two decades. Levels of happiness were up in 40 countries and down in only 12, researchers reported. In the latest survey, Denmark is the happiest nation in the world and Zimbabwe the unhappiest. The United States ranked 16th, after New Zealand and just ahead of Guatemala. (University of Michigan)
Read a summary
Smaller Families, Fewer Problems
11 Aug 08 Parents in larger families are more likely to report mixed-quality relations with their children than parents of small families, according to an analysis of the National Survey of Family Growth. Only 11% of parents of two children reported the lowest relationship quality with at least one child, compared with 29% of parents of five or more children. "Greater family size offers more opportunities for both positive and negative relations with adult children," according to the paper.
(University of Albany)
Read the paper
Kids Say Glasses Make You Look Smart, Honest
4 Aug 08 Young children think that kids who wear glasses are smarter and more honest than those who do not. Eighty children between the ages of six and 10 years old were shown paired photographs in which the subjects differed by gender, ethnicity and whether they wore glasses. Wearing glasses did not affect children's judgments about appearance, potential as a playmate or likely athletic abilities. (Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics)
Read the abstract
Going Broke
28 Jul 08 It takes nearly three decades for people to fully recover from bankruptcy, according to researchers Jay Zagorsky of Ohio State University and Losi R. Lupica of teh Univeresity of Maine.. They found that people who go bankrupt eventually catch up to those of similar social and economic backgrounds in terms of savings in about 12 years, total income in 14 years, home ownership in 14 years, and net worth in 26 years.
(Ohio State University)
Read a summary
Taste Test
21 Jul 08 Is it the cup or its contents that determines how good a sip of water tastes? For some consumers, the way a container feels plays a critical role in determining how they rate the taste of a cup of mineral water. Researchers at Rutgers University and the University of Michigan found that water served in flimsy cups was considered less tasty than the same water served in sturdier containers. Unexpectedly, people who are disinclined to touch products before they buy were the most likely to react negatively to the taste of water served in a flimsy cup.
(Rutgers University)
Read a summary
Hours of Fun
14 Jul 08 U.S. adults spend about five hours a day engaging in leisure activities or playing sports, according to the government's 2007 annual release of time-diary data from the American Time Use Survey. Men have more leisure time than women, and people ages 75 and older have more free time than other adults do. About half of adults' leisure time is spent watching television, which was the most common leisure activity. Four in five adults on average watch TV each day.
(Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Read a summary
Vote Your Genes
7 Jul 08 It's well known that children whose parents turn out to vote often become voting adults, and most researchers explain that is because parents pass their values to their children. But an article in the American Political Science Review concludes that the genes they pass along play a "large and significant" role in determining voting behavior. The work is based on matching Los Angeles voter turnout records to a registry of twins, supplemented by data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.
(American Political Science Association)
Read the article
Drinking Laws and Unplanned Pregnancies
30 Jun 08 States with lower minimum drinking ages also have a higher incidence of low birth weight babies and premature births, according to two economists who examined state vital statistics collected between 1978 and 1999. The effect is largest among black women. They suspect that relaxed drinking laws lead to poor birth outcomes because they increase the number of unplanned pregnancies.
(NBER)
Read the abstract
Addicted to Grief
23 Jun 08 Long-term grieving activates pleasure and reward areas of the brain and may lead some people to become "addicted" to grief. UCLA researchers studied 23 women who lost a mother or sister to breast cancer. Of these women, 11 had complicated grief, which typically involves prolonged and unabated feelings of sorrow. The women were shown photos of their deceased loved one. Brain scans revealed that the reward areas of the brain were stimulated only in the women experiencing complicated grief. (NeuroImage)
Read a summary
Crowd Control
16 Jun 08 Women tend to rate men as more desirable potential partners when those men are surrounded by women than when they are alone or with other men, according to research in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. But the opposite is true for men: They rate women as less desirable when those women are shown surrounded by men than when they are shown alone or with other women.
(Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin)
Read the abstract
Blame it on Moms
11 Jun 08 Encouraging words bring out the best in fathers while many dads refrain from providing infant care if they are criticized by their wife or partner. A study of 97 couples by an Ohio State University researcher found that fathers do more day-to-day care when they receive active encouragement from mom. But even fathers who wanted to get involved in baby care didn't do so when faced with a judgmental mother. (Journal of Family Psychology)
Read a summary
Job Satisfaction Higher For Military Minorities
2 Jun 08 Patterns of job satisfaction for minorities and whites are dramatically different in the military, compared with civilian life, according to an article in the American Sociological Review. Black and Latino members of the armed services score higher on work satisfaction tests than do whites; the opposite is true for civilian jobs. "In an environment where racial stratification has been substantially reduced, traditional racial disparities across a variety of well-being dimensions reverse themselves," author Jennifer Hickes Lundquist writes.
(American Sociological Review)
Read the article:
That's Fair
27 May 08 The human brain responds to being treated fairly the same way it responds to winning money, eating a desired food or seeing an attractive face, claim a team of UCLA psychologists. They used a brain scan to see how test subjects responded to a fair and unfair offers of money and found that reasonable offers activated the brain's "reward circuitry." But an insulting moinitary offer triggered a region of the brain called the insula, which is associated with feelings of disgust. (Psychological Science)
Read a summary
Home is Where the Heart Is
19 May 08 New Orleans residents who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina were more than five times more likely to suffer serious psychological distress in the year following the disaster than those whose homes were spared by the storm, according to results of a pilot study presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America. In all, about two-thirds of the 144 study participants reported their homes were badly damaged or destroyed.
(University of Michigan)
Read a summary
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)
Read the abstract
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)
Read the study
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)
Read the article
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)
Read the paper
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)
Read More
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)
Read the paper
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)
Read the report
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)
Read the study
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)
Read the Abstract
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.)
Read the paper
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)
Read the Abstract
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.)
Read the Abstract
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)
Read a summary
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)
Read More
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)
Read More
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 )
Read a summary
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)
Read More
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)
Read More
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)
Download the PDF
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)
View journal issue
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)
Read More
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)
Read the abstract
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)
Download the pdf
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.
Read the abstract: