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What are the best predictors of how sexual a woman is?:
w 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…
1 min read
How does the character “Borat” get away with all that crazy stuff?:
ey 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…
1 min read
What does it mean if you make very accurate predictions of outcomes?
, 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…
1 min read
Is it a good idea to ban smoking in casinos?:
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…
1 min read
Are fat people jolly? – Part 2:
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…
1 min read
How confident should you be?
sk-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 (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…
1 min read
Why criminals hate terrorists:
rrorists make their job a lot harder: This paper argues that terrorism, beyond its immediate impact on innocent victims, also raises the costs of crime, and therefore, imposes a negative externality on potential criminals. Terrorism raises the costs of crime through two channels: (i) by increasing the presence and activity of the police force, and (ii) causing more people to stay at home rather than going out for leisure activities. Our analysis exploits a panel of 120 fatal terror attacks…
1 min read
How To Stress Out Less And Reduce Worrying
body likes stressing and worrying. And, no, even if you think it keeps you sharp it's not good for you. It can cause all sorts of health problems over time, including messing up your memory and ability to pay attention: The authors report the first direct assessment of working memory capacity when people engage in worry. High and low worriers performed a random key-press task while thinking about a current worry or a positive personally relevant topic. High (but not…
3 minutes
