Researchers at Harvard University have discovered that our experience of pain depends on whether we think someone caused the pain intentionally. In their study, participants who believed they were getting an electrical shock from another person on purpose, rather than accidentally, rated the very same shock as more painful. Participants seemed to get used to shocks that were delivered unintentionally, but those given on purpose had a fresh sting every time.

The practical implications of this finding are pretty interesting:

...These findings speak to how people experience pain and negative life events. If negative events are seen as intended, they may hurt more. This helps to explain why torture is so excruciating – not only are torture techniques themselves exceptionally painful, but it's the thought that counts—and makes torture hurt more than mere pain.

On the other hand, if negative events are seen as unintended, they may hurt less. This may explain, in part, why people in abusive relationships sometimes continue to stay in them. By rationalizing that an abusive partner did not intend harm, some victims may reduce their experience of pain, which could make them less likely to leave the relationship and escape the abuse.

Source

I ruptured a disc in my back years ago doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Made a full recovery but it was ow ow ow ow.

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How much of back pain is real?

Self-reported home values are widely used as a measure of housing wealth by researchers employing a variety of data sets and studying a number of different individual and household level decisions. The accuracy of this measure is an open empirical question, and requires some type of market assessment of the values reported. In this study, we examine the predictive power of self-reported housing wealth when estimating housing prices, utilizing the portion of the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement Study covering 1992–2006. We find that homeowners, on average, overestimate the value of their properties by between 5% and 10%. More importantly, we are the first to establish a strong correlation between accuracy and the economic conditions at the time of the property’s purchase. While most individuals overestimate the value of their property, those who buy during more difficult economic times tend to be more accurate, in some cases even underestimating the value of their house. We find a surprisingly strong, likely permanent, and in many cases long-lived effect of the initial conditions surrounding the purchase of properties, and on how individuals value them. This cyclicality of the overestimation of house prices provides some explanation for the difficulties currently faced by many homeowners, who were expecting large appreciations in home value to rescue them in case of increases in interest rates, which could jeopardize their ability to live up to their financial commitments.

Source:"How Well Do Individuals Predict the Selling Prices of Their Homes?" from The Levy Economics Institute Working Paper Collection No. 571

One of my favorite books covers a lot of places where you don't want to live: Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, is a hysterical book by P.J. O'Rourke. I highly recommend checking it out if you enjoy humor, travel or humorous travel.

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How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?

Does living in a fast paced country make you happier?

Where do most people want to live?

How to find a place to live where you'll be happy

Does the importance of attractiveness depend on where you live?

Does where you live determine whether you'll be a problem gambler or whether you'll get physically abused?

This research examines how a focus on time versus money can lead to two distinct mindsets that impact consumers’ willingness to donate to charitable causes. The results of three experiments, conducted both in the lab and in the field, reveal that asking individuals to think about “how much time they would like to donate” (versus “how much money they would like to donate”) to a charity increases the amount that they ultimately donate to the charity. Fueling this effect are differential mindsets activated by time versus money. Implications for the research on time, money and emotional well-being are discussed.

Source: "The Happiness of Giving: The Time-Ask Effect" from Stanford GSB, Research Paper No. 1998

The paper is by Jennifer Aaker whose excellent Twitter feed is here.

If you're looking to handle your own money better, I recommend this book.

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Do the emotions related to how you received money affect how you spend that money?

Do good motivations increase physical endurance? Do evil motivations increase it even more?

Are religious people nicer on Sundays?

Although the relationship between religion and economic development on the macro-level has been investigated, it is less clear how religious background influences economic attitudes and financial decision-making on the level of the individual or household, the micro-level. We use panel data from the extensive DNB Household Survey, covering the period from 1995 to 2008, to investigate whether – and through which channel – religious denomination affects household finance in the Netherlands. We find evidence that, in general, religious households care more about saving, are more risk-averse, consider themselves more trusting, have a more external locus of control, and have a stronger bequest motive. Furthermore, Catholics and Protestants have longer planning horizons, and Protestants and Evangelicals seem to have a greater sense of individual financial responsibility. Most of these factors matter for household financial decision-making, albeit to differing degrees. Using our religion variables as instruments for economic attitudes (and controlling for demographic and background risk characteristics), we demonstrate that the above-mentioned differences in economic beliefs and preferences explain the higher propensity to save by religious households in general and the lower investments in risky assets by Catholic households.

Source: "WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TRADE: THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN HOUSEHOLD FINANCE" from Tilburg University Discussion Paper, No. 2009–34

Not a religious text but close.

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Are religious people more generous, giving and cooperative?

Does "will to live" really make a difference in when you die?

Why do people say they're "Spiritual but not religious"?

Does religion stress us out or relieve anxiety?

Here you can find out if romantic rivals spur religiosity.

Here you can find out if sports can be considered a religion.

Here are some curious economic effects of religion.

NEURO-LINGUISTIC programming (NLP) is a popular form of inter-personal skill and communication training. Originating in the 1970s, the technique made specific claims about the ways in which individuals processed the world about them, and quickly established itself, not only as an aid to communication, but as a form of psychotherapy in its own right. Today, NLP is big business with large numbers of training courses, personal development programmes, therapeutic and educational interventions purporting to be based on the principles of NLP. This paper explores what NLP is, the evidence for it, and issues related to its use. It concludes that after three decades, there is still no credible theoretical basis for NLP, researchers having failed to establish any evidence for its efficacy that is not anecdotal.

Source: "NEURO-LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING: CARGO CULT PSYCHOLOGY?" from Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education Volume 1 • Number 2 • 58

For a more scientifically based way to better yourself, I recommend What You Can Change and What You Can't: The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement.

Digests of posts:

Things you didn't know about sex

How to quickly and easily improve your life

Things you didn't know about sports

Things you didn't know about happiness

Things you didn't know about lies, liars and detecting lies

Things you didn't know about negotiation, persuasion and influence

Things you didn't know about marriage and relationships

The more economically dependent a man is on his female partner, the more likely he is to cheat on her, according to research to be presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

"But for women, economic dependency seems to have the opposite effect: the more dependent they are on their male partners, the less likely they are to engage in infidelity,"...

...Ironically, men who make significantly more than their female partners were also more likely to cheat...

...Men were the least likely to cheat when their partners made approximately 75% of their incomes.

Source

Here are two movies that cover the history of sex research: fiction and nonfiction.

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Are husbands more likely to cheat when their wives are pregnant?

What predicts cheating in a relationship?

Do people cheat because they're stressed out?

How Many People Cheat?

Why are some more concerned with emotional fidelity and others with sexual fidelty?

Do women prefer men who are attached?

When does romantic involvement NOT reduce a man's testosterone level?

Things you didn't know about marriage and relationships

We empirically explore the relevance of risk taking behavior in tournaments. We make use of data from the NBA season 2007/2008 and measure risk taking by the fraction of three-point shots. Current heterogeneity of teams is taken into account by intermediate results. It turns out that indeed teams who are behind increase the risk in terms of more three-point attempts. We additionally analyze the consequences of this change in behavior. Enhanced risk taking is inefficient for the vast majority of cases and only beneficial in terms of a higher winning probability if a team is behind with a rather large amount of points. We discuss possible explanations for these decision errors.

Source: "Risk Taking Behavior in Tournaments: Evidence from the NBA" from IZA Discussion Paper No. 4812, March 2010

If you're looking for some good books about sports check out Moneyball and Game of Shadows. Here's a great book about a sports junkie. For great sports gambling stories, I recommend this book.

Related posts:

Here are a lot of things you didn't know about sports

Why do pitchers hit batters in baseball?

Does how far away an "away game" is affect how a sports team performs?

How would Babe Ruth fare in baseball today?

Are baseball umpires racist?

Does the system described in "Moneyball" still give teams an edge today?

What would happen if economists were NFL and MLB coaches?

Could a morbidly obese goalie shut out an NHL team?

Are NBA longshots harder to make than under-the-hoop jump shots?

When is the best month of the year to buy NFL tickets?

How much football is in a football game?

Temporary forms of employment account for a variable but never trivial share of total employment in both the U.S. and in Europe. In this article we look at how one specific form of temporary employment − employment with fixed-term contracts − fits into employers’ hiring policies. We find that human capital variables (schooling, skills and employer-provided training) as measured at the levels of the worker and the workplace are important determinants of the employers’ decisions to hire with fixed-term contracts and to promote temporary workers to permanent positions. Those employers that hire more with fixed-term contracts are also those that are more likely to offer a permanent position to their newly-hired temporary employees. Our results indicate that fixed-term contracts are used as mechanisms for screening workers for permanent positions.

Source: "Why Do Firms Use Fixed-Term Contracts?" from IZA Discussion Paper No. 4380, August 2009

Here's a classic about work. Related to the subject of improving work life is this book which I'm seeing the results of all around me. And I frequently recommend this book.

For being more productive I can't recommend this book enough and you should also check out this system as a complement to it.

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How much does income affect job satisfaction? And how much does job satisfaction affect income?

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Do employee of the month contests actually accomplish anything?

No:

This paper presents new evidence on the relationship between corruption and income inequality. Using a panel data methodology, we find that lower corruption is associated with higher income inequality in Latin America. This result is in contrast to other empirical studies but it makes sense in Latin America for a number of reasons. The finding of an inverse relationship between inequality and corruption suggests that institutional reform policies by themselves may be misguided.

Source: "Is Corruption Really Bad for Inequality? Evidence from Latin America" from Institute for Advanced Development Studies, Development Research Working Paper Series, No. 02/2010

Speaking of corruption, the most entertaining political book I've ever read is Parliament of Whores by P.J. O'Rourke. I highly recommend you check it out.

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Conclusions.  Women reported that they primarily do sex work for financial gain although a significant minority prefer it to other work they would be likely to do. These results should be interpreted in the context that the presence of personality disorders that are common among sex workers were not measured in this study.

Source: "The Job Satisfaction of Female Sex Workers Working in Licensed Brothels in Victoria, Australia" from The Journal of Sexual Medicine

SuperFreakonomics has a very interesting section on prostitution covering whether prostitutes are patriotic, how many prostitutes are seasonal workers, and whether pimps are worth it.