Barking up the wrong tree

If the "truth" resonates with the listener, yes:

This study tests the folk psychological belief that we find things funny because we think they are true. Specifically, it addresses the relationship between implicit preferences and laughter. Fifty-nine undergraduate Rutgers University students (33 females and 26 males) from ethnically diverse backgrounds were videotaped while watching a white stand-up comedian for 30 min. Positive emotional expression associated with laughter was later scored using the facial action coding system (FACS). Computer-timed Implicit Association Tests (IATs) were used to measure a subject's implicit preferences for traditional gender roles and racial preferences (blacks vs. whites). Results show that participants laughed more in response to jokes that matched their implicit preferences (e.g., those with stronger implicit preferences for whites laughed more at racially charged material). Implications for the evolution of humor, and laughter as a hard-to-fake signal of preferences, are discussed.

Source: "It's funny because we think it's true: laughter is augmented by implicit preferences" from "Evolution and Human Behavior"

For some very funny writing (to my implicit preferences, at least) I recommend this book.

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Malcolm Gladwell amusing story about about the "Perverse and Often Baffling" (Audio):

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Stop predicting so many upsets:

Every year, billions of dollars are spent gambling on the outcomes of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. This study examines how individuals make predictions for tournament pools, one of the most popular forms of betting, in which individuals must correctly predict as many games in the tournament as possible. We demonstrate that individuals predict more upsets (i.e., wins by a higher seeded team) than would be considered rational by a normative choice model, and that individuals are no better than chance at doing so. These predictions fit a pattern of probability matching, in which individuals predict upsets at a rate equal to past frequency. This pattern emerges because individuals believe the outcomes of the games are nonrandom and, therefore, predictable.

The author of the paper explains:

"Picking the lower seed is a good strategy, but people think, 'I can't win by doing that because everyone else is doing this,'" said Ed Hirt, professor in IU Bloomington's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. "The upsets people pick are no better than chance. People have this idea that they know how many upsets will occur, but can they predict the ones that will occur? They pick upsets but not the right ones and end up sabotaging their efforts."

Another tip: Don't trust the so-called "experts":

Other studies have shown that making NCAA bracket predictions based on rankings from other experts, such as sportswriter polls or gambling bookies, are no more successful than choosing the lower seeds.

Source

By the way, if you're watching a game and get frustrated because it seems one of the players doesn't know what he's doing, you're 100% correct. Athletes don't know what they're doing. That's okay though; if they knew what they were doing, they probably wouldn't be that good:

Skilled athletes often maintain that overthinking disrupts performance of their motor skills. Here, we examined whether these experiences have a basis in verbal overshadowing, a phenomenon in which describing memories for ineffable perceptual experiences disrupts later retention. After learning a unique golf-putting task, golfers of low and intermediate skill either described their actions in detail or performed an irrelevant verbal task. They then performed the putting task again. Strikingly, describing their putting experience significantly impaired higher skill golfers' ability to reachieve the putting criterion, compared with higher skill golfers who performed the irrelevant verbal activity. Verbalization had no such effect, however, for lower skill golfers. These findings establish that the effects of overthinking extend beyond dual-task interference and may sometimes reflect impacts on long-term memory. We propose that these effects are mediated by competition between procedural and declarative memory, as suggested by recent work in cognitive neuroscience.

Source: "Overthinking skilled motor performance: Or why those who teach can't do" from Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

For more on gambling stories, I recommend this book.

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There are ways to make a narcissist easier to deal with. Emphasize representation of community:

Three studies tested the hypotheses that the activation of communal mental representations promotes relationship commitment (communal activation hypothesis) and that this effect is stronger among narcissists than among nonnarcissists (Communal Activation x Narcissism hypothesis). Across experimental, longitudinal, and interaction-based research methods, and in participant samples ranging from college students to married couples, results supported the communal activation hypothesis in two of three studies and the Communal Activation x Narcissism hypothesis in all three studies. Moreover, a meta-analytic summary of the results across the three studies revealed that the association of communal activation with commitment was significant overall and that it was stronger among narcissists than among nonnarcissists. Narcissists tended to be less committed than nonnarcissists at low levels of communal activation, but this effect diminished and sometimes even reversed at high levels. This work is the first to identify a mechanism by which narcissists can become more committed relationship partners.

Source: "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus: Communal Activation Promotes Relationship Commitment Among Narcissists" from Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

When they do something wrong, use disappointment as a weapon to keep them in line:

The authors examined whether individual differences in social value orientation moderate responses to other's expressions of disappointment in negotiation. The literature suggested competing hypotheses: First, prosocials are more responsive to other's disappointment because they have a greater concern for other; second, proselfs are more responsive because they see other's disappointment as a threat to their own outcomes. Results of a computer-mediated negotiation in which a simulated opponent expressed disappointment, no emotion, or anger supported the second prediction: Proselfs conceded more to a disappointed opponent than to a neutral or angry one, whereas prosocials were unaffected by the other's emotion. This effect was mediated by participants' motivation to satisfy the other's needs, which disappointment triggered more strongly in proselfs than in prosocials. Implications for theorizing on emotion, social value orientation, and negotiation are discussed.

Source: "What Other's Disappointment May Do to Selfish People: Emotion and Social Value Orientation in a Negotiation Context" from Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Maybe you think you don't deal with too many narcissists. There's research that shows the leader of a group is more likely to be on the narcissistic end of the spectrum:

These studies investigate whether individuals with high narcissism scores would be more likely to emerge as leaders during leaderless group discussions. The authors hypothesized that narcissists would emerge as group leaders. In three studies, participants completed personality questionnaires and engaged in four-person leaderless group discussions. Results from all three studies reveal a link between narcissism and leader emergence. Studies 1 and 2 further reveal that the power dimension of narcissism predicted reported leader emergence while controlling for sex, self-esteem, and the Big Five personality traits. Study 3 demonstrates an association between narcissism and expert ratings of leader emergence in a group of executives. The implications of the propensity of narcissists to emerge as leaders are discussed.

Source: "Leader Emergence: The Case of the Narcissistic Leader" from Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

If you're looking for some fiction that goes well past narcissism into some much darker and more twisted territory I recommend this book.

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Yes. Though circular, socially anxious people make their interactions with others notably less smooth because of their anxious behavior. So, yes, if you're acting socially anxious you have a reason to be socially anxious because you really are screwing things up:

The behavioral manifestations of social anxiety may have implications for social outcomes. Unfortunately, little is known about how anxiety shapes social interaction. The present study examined social interactions in dyads consisting of either 2 nonsocially anxious (NSA) individuals or 1 socially anxious (SA) and 1 NSA individual. Behavior, self-reported affect, and perceptions were examined. In comparison with the interactions of NSA pairs, high levels of fidgeting, poor reciprocity of smiling behavior, more self-talk, and more frequent reassurance seeking and giving characterized interactions between SA and NSA participants. Both SA participants and their NSA partners rated their interactions as being less smooth and coordinated than did participants in NSA-NSA dyads. In addition, SA participants' reassurance seeking and self-talk correlated negatively with partner positive affect and perceptions of interaction quality. The authors discuss self-focused attention and the interpersonal consequences of social anxiety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)

Source: "Interpersonal Consequences of Social Anxiety" from Journal of Abnormal Psychology

Looks like the symptom perpetuates the disease in this case. Relax and you'll actually have fewer reasons to be anxious.

If you're dealing with some anxiety (and don't require serious medical attention) I recommend this book.

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How attractive she thinks she is, how masculine she is and how much she drinks:

Women vary with respect to monogamous/polyandrous inclinations, as indexed by the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI). Possible sources of SOI variation include variation in perceptions relating to the utility of different mating tactics and variation in one’s degree of masculinity/femininity, among other things. In three studies with undergraduate participants SOI, an index of self-perceived attractiveness and two measures of masculinization, namely scores on the Vandenberg Mental Rotation test (V-MRT) and 2D:4D digit ratios, were measured. Self-perceived attractiveness predicted SOI in the first study, but not in the second study. Right 2D:4D did predict SOI in the second study. In the third study, both self-perceived attractiveness and right 2D:4D predicted SOI, and so did V-MRT scores. However, the strongest single predictor of SOI in Study 3 was the reported amount spent on alcohol during the average month.

Source: "Self-perceived attractiveness and masculinization predict women’s sociosexuality" from "Evolution and Human Behavior"

If you want to read more about sex and human nature I recommend this book.

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They should have titled this paper, "The Borat Effect":

This research examined the effect of language fluency on the evaluation of culturally inappropriate behavior. A series of video vignettes were created in which a nonnative speaker either followed or broke social rules while displaying varying degrees of fluency in English. Results demonstrated a shielding effect of poor language fluency, such that when the nonnative individual acted in a culturally inappropriate manner, poor fluency in English shielded the individual from negative evaluation.

Source: "Training Wheels for Cultural Learning: Poor Language Fluency and Its Shielding Effect on the Evaluation of Culturally Inappropriate Behavior" from "Journal of Language and Social Psychology"

I'm going to speak in broken English all the time and just GET AWAY WITH MURDER.

If you want more Borat he's here and here.

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No, you're not psychic, but you might be clinically depressed:

In one form of a contingency judgement task individuals must judge the relationship between an action and an outcome. There are reports that depressed individuals are more accurate than are nondepressed individuals in this task. In particular, nondepressed individuals are influenced by manipulations that affect the salience of the outcome, especially outcome probability. They overestimate a contingency if the probability of an outcome is high—the “outcome-density effect”. In contrast, depressed individuals display little or no outcome-density effect. This apparent knack for depressives not to be misled by outcome density in their contingency judgements has been termed “depressive realism”, and the absence of an outcome-density effect has led to the characterization of depressives as “sadder but wiser”. We present a critical summary of the depressive realism literature and provide a novel interpretation of the phenomenon. We suggest that depressive realism may be understood from a psychophysical analysis of contingency judgements.

Source: "The sad truth about depressive realism" from "The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology"

If this described you, you might wanna check out this book, this book or this book.

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If you want casinos and the state to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe:

Smoking was banned in all Illinois casinos in January 2008. We explore the effects that the smoking ban has had on Illinois casino revenue and attendance. Our empirical methodology extends and enhances that of previous literature in that we observe a natural experiment in comparing the performance of Illinois casinos with out-of-state casinos (no smoking ban) that share a market with Illinois casinos. Estimates suggest that revenue and admissions at Illinois casinos declined by more than 20 percent ($400 million) and 12 percent, respectively. Calculations reveal that casino tax revenue to state and local governments declined by approximately $200 million.

Source: "Casino Revenue and the Illinois Smoking Ban" from "Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Working Paper Series"

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My friend Ben Casnocha recently gave me some great advice: he said it would be lot more interesting if I started questioning these studies a little more. Well, as he frequently is, Ben's right. I previously posted on whether fat people are jolly. Looks like the verdict may not be in. Because while the (admittedly limited) previous study said yes, here's one that links obesity and unhappiness:

This paper provides insight on the relationship between obesity and happiness. Using the latest available cross sectional data from Germany (GSOEP 2006), UK (BHPS 2005), and Australia (HILDA 2007). We examine whether there is evidence on the impact of overweight on subjective well being. The Hausman test is employed in the univariate and multivariate specifications chosen and reveals evidence for the presence of endogeneity in the German and the Australian data. Instrumental variable analysis is performed under the presence of endogeneity whereas for the UK we run OLS regressions. Results indicate that in all three countries obesity has a negative and significant effect on the subjective well being of individuals. For Germany, using a differences-in-differences methodology, I find that non-overweight/non-obese individuals are on average 0.5 units happier than their overweight/obese counterparts. My findings also have important implications for the effect of other socio-demographic, economic and individual characteristics on well being.

Source: "Obesity and Happiness" from University of Connecticut Department of Economics Working Paper Series

If you want to learn more about the science behind the obesity epidemic I recommend this book.

And if you're not already reading Ben's blog, you should be. You may also want to check out his new piece in the latest issue of Newsweek.

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Risk-averse people might say it pays to not be too confident. Others might feel being as realistic as possible makes sense. Being overconfident can clearly be dangerous because you can get in way over your head (I personally believe there is no such thing as a "pretty good" alligator wrestler.)

According to a paper by Bruce Weinberg at Ohio State, moderate overconfidence looks like the way to go. It's enough to push you to try new things and set your goals high:

People use information about their ability to choose tasks. If more challenging tasks provide more accurate information about ability, people who care about and who are risk averse over their perception of their own ability will choose tasks that are not sufficiently challenging. Overestimation of ability raises utility by deluding people into believing that they are more able than they are in fact. Moderate overestimation of ability and overestimation of the precision of initial information leads people to choose tasks that raise expected output, however extreme overconfidence leads people to undertake tasks that are excessively challenging. Consistent with our results, psychologists have found that moderate overconfidence is both pervasive and advantageous and that people maintain such beliefs by underweighting new information about their ability.

Source: "A Model of Overconfidence" from IZA Discussion Paper No. 4285, July 2009

So BE confident. Underweight some info about your ability -- but don't ignore it. Personally, I think I ping-pong back and forth between hard realism (or attempts at it) and moderate overconfidence. Depends on how much I have to lose or gain. High upside, moderate downside? I can conquer worlds! Alligator wrestling? Maybe I'll just watch, thanks. How about you? Post a comment.

If you want an very interesting and engrossing book about a different kind of confidence - con men - check out this book.

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