5 things you didn't know about first dates:
- Guys, wear red. Actually, ladies should wear red too.
- A roller coaster and a Red Bull might be a great first date. Anything that gets the adrenaline flowing is a good idea.
- You should understand what smooth behavior is on a first date.
- Best topic of conversation for a first date is travel. Don't talk about movies.
- The answer to the question "Do you like the taste of beer?" predicted who was most likely to have sex on a first date. 30% of women using online dating have had sex on the first internet date.
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Related posts:
10 things that you need to know about sex
5 things you didn't know about vacations:
- In the past, I've posted a number of easy ways to improve your next vacation.
- These countries are the friendliest. You can trust the people most in these US states. And the people in these states are the happiest.
- Traveling can make you more creative.
- And if you're looking for something wild and crazy: These countries drink the most. These countries and these states are the most promiscuous.
- Going on vacation does improve our happiness in the long run. Our work performance is improved for a month afterward.
Is there a quick fix for feeling alone?
Use something that makes you feel nostalgic. Watch a favorite show from when you were a kid or eat candy you liked when you were growing up.
Via Winnipeg Free Press:
The researchers measured people's need to belong after playing the game, after asking them to choose between nostalgic and contemporary products such as cookies and shower gel, and then again after they'd consumed those nostalgic products. They wondered if simply choosing a nostalgic product would be enough to make people feel less left out, Loveland said -- but they found it's actually eating that brand of cookie from childhood or watching that favourite TV show from university that gives people a boost.
"We found it's the act of consuming a nostalgic product that does make you feel connected to other people again and satiate(s) your need to belong," Loveland said. "We thought it was really cool that when we gave them a nostalgic cookie, it made them feel all better."
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Is personal debt in the US so high because it's getting harder to find a spouse?
Research shows that when men outnumber women in a region, guys take on a competitive mindset and are more willing to spend.
Areas with this type of gender imbalance show higher rates of personal debt.
via MIT:
Many Americans went into personal debt before the economic recession hit the country in 2008. Why? For some men, the biggest factor may have been intense competition to find a spouse.
That’s the suggestion of a new study co-authored by an MIT professor that analyzes the ways social settings can affect people’s propensity to save or spend money. Geographic areas with unusually high ratios of men to women, as the study notes, are correlated with high levels of personal debt; in follow-up lab experiments, the researchers found that men are more willing to spend money quickly in social settings with marked gender imbalances.
“There is reason to believe that men are making financial decisions in a way that reflects the influence of the ratios of men and women,” says Joshua Ackerman, an assistant professor of marketing at the MIT Sloan School of Management and one of the researchers who performed the study. “Seeing more men around them in these environments activates a competitive mindset, which leads to a short-term, spend-now approach.”
And
Consider the case of Macon and Columbus, two Georgia cities located within 100 miles of each other. In Columbus, there are 1.18 single men for every single woman, while in Macon, there are 0.78 single men for every single woman. As it happens, the average consumer debt in Columbus is $3,479 higher, per capita, than it is in Macon.
And:
When shown images with many more men than women, men in the study were willing to reduce their savings by 42 percent, and were willing to assume 84 percent more debt. “When men see more men than women in these photograph arrays, they become more likely to want to spend money more quickly, even to the point of going into debt,” Ackerman observes.
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What are your relationships worth, in dollars?
How can you maintain self-control during emotional highs and lows?
We can lose control and overindulge when we think a good mood is fleeting or a bad mood will not go away.
By focusing on why good feelings will last or why bad feelings will pass we can prevent poor decisions.
Via The Times of India:
"The recipe is simple. If you are feeling happy, focus on reasons why those feelings will last, and if you are feeling unhappy, focus on reasons why those feelings will pass," write Aparna A. Labroo of the University of Chicago and Anirban Mukhopadhyay of the University of Michigan, the authors of the report published in the Journal of Consumer Research.
According to the report, indulgence is often a result of people trying to improve their mood.
Its authors say that people tend to indulge themselves when they believe their happy feelings might pass unless they do something to prolong the good feeling.
Others feel miserable and believe they'll be stuck with the blues unless they do something to improve their mood, they add.
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5 ways to easily increase self-control
What keeps men and women sexually satisfied?
Researchers surveyed 1000 couples in 5 countries looking at sexual satisfaction in relationships 1-51 years in length.
Some interesting points:
- Men were more sexually satisfied with with their relationship when they had frequent recent sex and fewer lifetime sexual partners: "Lifetime number of sexual partners was a significant predictor of sexual but not relationship satisfaction, and this only for men. Men reported more lifetime sexual partners than women (M = 11.9 vs. 4.9). More sexual partners predicted less sexual satisfaction. Searching for a better partner or sexual experience may emerge from or be connected to a lack of sexual satisfaction rather than just a desire for sexual recreation and variety. Alternatively, more partners might indicate different standards based on greater experience.
- "For women, however, the impact of duration on sexual satisfaction is both significant and substantial. During the first 15 years of the relationship, women had significantly lower probabilities of reporting satisfaction than men. From year 30 on in the relationship, however, women had a significantly higher probability of reporting satisfaction."
- "Men who valued their partner’s orgasm were more likely to report relationship happiness, with each additional point of valuation increasing the odds of happiness by a factor of 1.17. Reporting frequent kissing and cuddling and frequent sexual caressing by partner both increased the odds of reporting relationship happiness by a factor of approximately 3."
- Country-level patterns indicated that Japanese and Brazilian women were significantly more likely than U.S. women to report sexual satisfaction, net of all other characteristics."
The abstract:
Sexuality research focuses almost exclusively on individuals rather than couples, though ongoing relationships are very important for most people and cultures. The present study was the first to examine sexual and relationship parame- ters of middle-aged and older couples in committed relationships of 1–51 years duration. Survey research was conducted in Brazil, Germany, Japan, Spain, and the U.S. targeting 200 men aged 40–70 and their female partners in each country, with 1,009 couples in the final sample. Key demographic, health, physical intimacy, sexual behavior, sexual function, and sexual history variables were used to model relationship happiness and sexual satisfaction. The median ages were 55 for men and 52 for women; median relationship duration was 25 years. Relationship satisfaction in men depended on health, physical intimacy, and sexual functioning, while in women only sexual functioning predicted relationship satisfaction. Models predicting sexual satisfaction included significant physical intimacy and sexual functioning for both genders and, for men, more frequent recent sexual activity and fewer lifetime partners. Longer relationship duration predicted greater relationship happiness and sexual satisfaction for men. However, women in relationships of 20 to 40 years were significantly less likely than men to report relationship happiness. Compared to men, women showed lower sexual satisfaction early in the relationship and greater sexual satisfaction later. Within the long-term committed relationship context, there were significant gender differences in correlates of sexual and relationship satisfaction, with sexual functioning a common predictor of both types of satisfaction and physical intimacy a more consistent and salient predictor for men.
Source: "Sexual Satisfaction and Relationship Happiness in Midlife and Older Couples in Five Countries" from Arch Sex Behav (2011) 40:741–753
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Can sleep deprivation alleviate depression?
Yes, but only temporarily:
Via the WSJ:
Brain scans also showed that the subjects who had pulled all-nighters had heightened activity in the mesolimbic pathway, a brain circuit driven by dopamine, a neurotransmitter that typically regulates feelings of pleasure, addiction and cravings.
The boost of dopamine after an all-nighter may help explain why sleep deprivation can alleviate major depression in about 60% of patients, although the effect is only temporary. "As soon as they get recovery sleep, all that mood elevation is lost," says Dr. Walker.
And there are other reasons it may not be a good idea:
Although the feelings of euphoria sound great, Dr. Walker warns that operating more on emotion than reason can be very risky. "You are all gas pedal and no brake," he says. That can be dangerous, indeed, if you are in a job that requires both long hours and difficult decision making.
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Related posts:
10 things you need to know to be happier
Can "trash talk" actually improve our performance?
It's called "stereotype lift" and it's the opposite of "stereotype threat", which I addressed in this post.
When a negative generalization says our opponent is inferior or will do worse in a competition, we actually see an improvement in our own performance:
When a negative stereotype impugns the ability or worth of an outgroup, people may experience stereotype lift—a performance boost that occurs when downward comparisons are made with a denigrated outgroup. In a meta-analytic review, members of non- stereotyped groups were found to perform better when a negative stereotype about an outgroup was linked to an intellectual test than when it was not (d 1⁄4 :24; p < :0001). Notably, people appear to link negative stereotypes to evaluative tests more or less automatically. Simply presenting a test as diagnostic of ability was thus sufficient to induce stereotype lift. Only when negative stereotypes were explicitly invalidated or rendered irrelevant to the test did the lift effect disappear.
Source: "Stereotype Lift" from Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 39 (2003) 456–467
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5 ways to easily increase self-control
Do some people only need a few hours of sleep a night?
Melinda Beck at the WSJ explains:
For a small group of people—perhaps just 1% to 3% of the population—sleep is a waste of time.
Natural "short sleepers," as they're officially known, are night owls and early birds simultaneously. They typically turn in well after midnight, then get up just a few hours later and barrel through the day without needing to take naps or load up on caffeine.
They are also energetic, outgoing, optimistic and ambitious, according to the few researchers who have studied them. The pattern sometimes starts in childhood and often runs in families.
While it's unclear if all short sleepers are high achievers, they do have more time in the day to do things, and keep finding more interesting things to do than sleep, often doing several things at once.
You're probably not one of them.
Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do, Dr. Buysse says. The rest end up chronically sleep deprived, part of the one-third of U.S. adults who get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a report last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In fact, it may be tied to a type of mania:
A few studies have suggested that some short sleepers may have hypomania, a mild form of mania with racing thoughts and few inhibitions. "These people talk fast. They never stop. They're always on the up side of life," says Dr. Buysse. He was one of the authors of a 2001 study that had 12 confirmed short sleepers and 12 control subjects keep diaries and complete numerous questionnaires about their work, sleep and living habits. One survey dubbed "Attitude for Life" that was actually a test for hypomania. The natural short sleepers scored twice as high as the controls.
No, you can't become one of them:
There is currently no way people can teach themselves to be short sleepers. Still, scientists hope that by studying short sleepers, they can better understand how the body regulates sleep and why sleep needs vary so much in humans... Christopher Jones, a University of Utah neurologist and sleep scientist who oversees the recruiting, says there is one question that is more revealing than anything else: When people do have a chance to sleep longer, on weekends or vacation, do they still sleep only five or six hours a night? People who sleep more when they can are not true short sleepers, he says.
What are these people like?
To date, Dr. Jones says he has identified only about 20 true short sleepers, and he says they share some fascinating characteristics. Not only are their circadian rhythms different from most people, so are their moods (very upbeat) and their metabolism (they're thinner than average, even though sleep deprivation usually raises the risk of obesity). They also seem to have a high tolerance for physical pain and psychological setbacks.
"They encounter obstacles, they just pick themselves up and try again," Dr. Jones says.
I've posted before about the importance of sleep:
- Being tired actually makes it harder to be happy.
- Lack of sleep = more likely to get sick.
- "Sleeping on it" does improve decision making.
- Lack of sleep can make you more likely to behave unethically.
Do traffic tickets really reduce accidents?
Yes. They significantly reduce accidents and non-fatal injuries. They may not reduce fatalities, however. Looks like tickets have a bigger impact at night and on female drivers.
This paper analyzes the effect of traffic tickets on motor vehicle accidents. OLS estimates may be upward-biased because police officers tend to focus on areas where and periods when there is heavy traffic and thus higher rates of accidents. This paper exploits the dramatic increase in tickets during the Click-it-or-Ticket campaign to identify the causal impact of tickets on accidents using data from Massachusetts. I find that tickets significantly reduce accidents and non-fatal injuries. However, there is limited evidence that tickets lead to fewer fatalities. I provide suggestive evidence that tickets have a larger impact at night and on female drivers.
Source: "Do Traffic Tickets Reduce Motor Vehicle Accidents? Evidence from a Natural Experiment" fromDara N. Lee, University of Missouri-Columbia, January 2012
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Would it be great to live someplace where everyone had Ferraris and Porsches?
