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Does getting it wrong help you get it right?
s. Tests help learning even if you don't do well: Taking tests enhances learning. But what happens when one cannot answer a test question—does an unsuccessful retrieval attempt impede future learning or enhance it? The authors examined this question using materials that ensured that retrieval attempts would be unsuccessful. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were asked fictional general-knowledge questions (e.g., “What peace treaty ended the Calumet War?”). In Experiments 3–6, participants were shown a cue word (e.g., whale) and…
1 min read
Birthday thoughts.
day's my birthday. It got me thinking. Do you understand the power of compound interest? And I'm not talking about finance, actually. I started this blog about 9 months ago as a little social media experiment. 6 months ago it started taking the shape of what it is today. Now all the sudden there are over 1100 posts, thousands of people paying attention every day, a store, comments, links... Compound interest. You know what happens when you do something every…
2 minutes
Do credit card minimum payments make people pay less than they might otherwise?
w research by the University of Warwick reveals that many credit card customers become fixated on the level of minimum payments given on credit card bills. The mere presence of a minimum payment is enough to reduce the actual amount many people choose to pay on their bills, leading to further interest payments. The research, by University of Warwick Psychology researcher Dr Neil Stewart, is to be published in the journal Psychological Science, in a paper entitled “The Cost of…
1 min read
Is kindness less optional for women than for men?
least in the workplace it is: In 2 experimental studies, the authors hypothesized that the performance of altruistic citizenship behavior in a work setting would enhance the favorability of men's (but not women's) evaluations and recommendations, whereas the withholding of altruistic citizenship behavior would diminish the favorability of women's (but not men's) evaluations and recommendations. Results supported the authors' predictions. Together with the results of a 3rd study demonstrating that work-related altruism is thought to be less optional for…
1 min read
Does cleavage work at work?
examined whether men, but not women, would be distracted by a female sales representative's exposed cleavage, leading to greater perceived efficacy for a weak, but not for a strong product. A community sample of 88 men and 97 women viewed a video of a female pharmaceutical sales representative who (a) had exposed cleavage or dressed modestly and (b) pitched an ineffective or effective product. Although men were not more distracted or persuaded by cleavage, they gave the cleavage-exposed (versus…
1 min read
How does what you have and what you want affect happiness?
e old saw is true: "What you have makes you happy. What you want makes you unhappy.": A specially designed household survey for rural China is used to analyse the determinants of aspirations for income, proxied by reported minimum income need, and the determinants of subjective well-being, both satisfaction with life and satisfaction with income. It is found that aspiration income is a positive function of actual income and reference income, and that subjective well-being is raised by actual income…
1 min read
Another March Madness bracket tip:
nce it seems everyone is watching basketball and no one is doing any work, I figured it can't hurt for me to post something relevant. I already chimed in with some info on what studies have to say about building a successful bracket but more info is always good. Apparently there are anomalies in seeded tournaments that can affect outcomes: Tournament design is of crucial importance in competitive sports. The primary goal of effective tournament design is to provide incentives…
2 minutes
Do attractive people have more kids?
ah, but much of the effect is due less to attractiveness, per se, and more to not being so ugly that nobody wants to marry you: Physical attractiveness has been associated with mating behavior, but its role in reproductive success of contemporary humans has received surprisingly little attention. In the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (1244 women, 997 men born between 1937 and 1940), we examined whether attractiveness assessed from photographs taken at age ∼18 years predicted the number of biological children…
1 min read
