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What kinds of friendships does Facebook promote?
..Facebook promotes mainly weak, low-commitment ties." Facebook offers the possibility of increased social contact via a process known as ‘friending’, whereby users create personal profiles and accumulate ‘friends’ on a reciprocal basis. The making and maintaining of friendships has been shown to be particularly important to young adults, but there is a strong debate in the literature on computer-mediated communication about the value of the often weak ties that are created. Relatively little is known about the kind of contact…
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How do men and women use their time at work differently?
nder gaps in income and level of position in the workplace are widespread. One explanation for this inequality is that the genders perform differently under competitive conditions, as previous experimental studies have found a significant gender gap in competitive tasks that are perceived to favor men. In this paper, we use a verbal task that is perceived to favor women and find no gender difference under competition per se. We also reject the hypothesis that a stereotype threat explains the…
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Does competition enhance performance or cheating?
this paper we experimentally test whether competing for a desired reward does not only affect individuals’ performance, but also their tendency to cheat. Recent doping scandals in sports as well as forgery and plagiarism scandals in academia have been partially explained by “competitive pressures“, which suggests a link between competition and cheating. In our experiment subjects conduct a task where they have the possibility to make use of illegitimate tools to better their results. We find that women react…
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Does happiness increase life expectancy?
rld life expectancy has risen by around 20 years in the last 50 years. This period has also witnessed rising happiness levels around the world suggesting that happiness might be one of the causes behind the decline in mortality. We investigate the relationship between happiness and mortality using the German Socio-Economic Panel. We consider doctor visits, self-reported health, and presence of chronic illness as health measures. After controlling for initial health conditions, we find that happiness extends life expectancy. 10…
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Being Prideful Makes You More Likeable
is experiment examined the ability of pride to serve as an adaptive emotion within the context of social interaction. After an in vivo induction of pride or a neutral state, participants engaged in a group problem-solving task. In contrast to a conventional view that pride is often associated with negative interpersonal outcomes, results confirmed that proud individuals not only took on a dominant role within the group problem-solving task, but also were perceived as the most likeable interaction partners. These…
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What predicts whether a nation will be more extraverted, more sexual and more open to experience?
evious research has documented cross-cultural differences in personality traits, but the origins of those differences remain unknown. The authors investigate the possibility that these cultural differences can be traced, in part, to regional differences in the prevalence in infectious diseases. Three specific hypotheses are deduced, predicting negative relationships between disease prevalence and (a) unrestricted sociosexuality, (b) extraversion, and (c) openness to experience. These hypotheses were tested empirically with methods that employed epidemiological atlases in conjunction with personality data collected from…
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Do the elderly pick mates differently than younger people do?
pe. Stereotypes of older adults as withdrawn or asexual fail to recognize that romantic relationships in later life are increasingly common. The authors analyzed 600 Internet personal ads from 4 age groups: 20–34, 40–54, 60–74, and 75+ years. Predictions from evolutionary theory held true in later life, when reproduction is no longer a concern. Across the life span, men sought physical attractiveness and offered status-related information more than women; women were more selective than men and sought status more than…
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Does your personality determine whether you’ll get dementia?
e authors examined the relationship between personality and cognitive impairment in 4,039 members of the Swedish Twin Registry. Neuroticism and extraversion scores were collected in 1973 at midlife, and cognitive impairment was assessed in the same group 25 years later. Data were analyzed with case-control and co-twin control designs. Greater neuroticism was associated with higher risk of cognitive impairment in the results from case-control, but not from co-twin, analyses. Compared with both extraversion and introversion, moderate extraversion was associated with…
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