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Why wives need to stay out of the house on SuperBowl Sunday
en the home team loses a football game, domestic violence goes up. When it's a big game, rates can increase by 50-100%: Family violence is a pervasive and costly problem, yet there is no consensus on how to interpret the phenomenon of violence by one family member against another. Some analysts assume that violence has an instrumental role in intra-family incentives. Others argue that violent episodes represent a loss of control that the offender immediately regrets. In this paper we…
2 minutes
Does power influence moral thinking?:
s, and profoundly: The authors conducted 5 studies to test the idea that both thinking about and having power affects the way in which people resolve moral dilemmas. It is shown that high power increases the use of rule-based (deontological) moral thinking styles, whereas low power increases reliance on outcome-based (consequentialist) moral thinking. Stated differently, in determining whether an act is right or wrong, the powerful focus on whether rules and principles are violated, whereas the powerless focus on the…
1 min read
How to quickly and easily fight depression:
ite about your feelings: This study examined whether ruminative style moderated the effects of expressive writing. Sixty-nine participants were assessed for ruminative style and depression symptoms at the beginning of their 1st college semester. Participants were then randomized to either an expressive writing or a control writing condition. Changes in depression symptoms were assessed 2, 4, and 6 months later. Results showed that a brooding ruminative style moderated the effects of expressive writing such that among those assigned to the…
1 min read
Are first impressions really that big a deal?
s. In fact, even more than you thought: Few interpersonal relationships endure without one party violating the other's expectations. Thus, the ability to build trust and to restore cooperation after a breach can be critical for the preservation of positive relationships. Using an iterated prisoner's dilemma, this article presents two experiments that investigated the effects of the timing of a trust breach—at the start of an interaction, after 5 trials, after 10 trials, or not at all. The findings indicate…
3 minutes
How to quickly and easily improve your life:
bsp; Here's a collection of all my posts that tell you "how to" improve something in your life -- generally in a quick and easy fashion. (None of us seem too keen on difficult things that take a long time.) They're almost all based on science, not just some random guy on the internet's opinion. Enjoy: How to pick a marriage partner How to make yourself more lucky How to get a job How to resist temptation How to make…
2 minutes
Why are women on the covers of magazines more frequently than men?
always found it funny that if you check out a woman's magazine, like Cosmo, there's a woman on the cover. And if you check out a men's magazine like Maxim... there's a woman on the cover. Seems like everybody thinks you can't go wrong with pretty women. Turns out science agrees: Substantial evidence suggests that physical attractiveness plays an important role in shaping overt mating preferences, judgments, and choices. Relatively few studies, however, have investigated the hypothesis that perceivers…
2 minutes
Does insurance make bad things less likely to happen?:
. If anything, I'd guess the opposite because people of morale hazard. But people do engage in this type of magical thinking when they get an insurance policy: The possession of an insurance policy may not only affect the severity of a potential loss but also its perceived probability. Intuitively, people may feel that if they are insured nothing bad is likely to happen, but if they do not have insurance they are at greater peril. In Experiment 1, respondents…
1 min read
Is it a man’s fault when he can’t tell a woman is interested in him?:
en other women have a hard time telling when a woman is interested in a man: The ability to judge another individual's romantic interest level—both toward oneself and toward others—is an adaptively important skill when choosing a suitable mate to pursue. We tested this ability using videos of individuals on speed dates as stimuli. Male and female observers were equally good at predicting interest levels, but they were more accurate when predicting male interest: Predictions of female interest were just…
2 minutes
