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NPR covers the fascinating story of Roger Craig, a PhD in computer science, who used data-mining and statistics to make hundreds of thousands of dollars on Jeopardy.

Using data-mining and text-clustering techniques, Craig grouped questions by category to figure out which topics were statistically common — and which weren't.

"Obviously it's impossible to know everything," Jones says. "So he was trying to decide: What things did he need to know? He prepared himself in a way that I think is probably more rigorous than any other contestant."

Once he'd calculated the odds a category would come up, Craig quizzed himself on a variety of questions to find the gaps in his own knowledge.

But Craig says it's a fallacy for game-show candidates to think they need to know everything.

"They want to learn every capital of every county in the world. And you really don't need to," he says. "Instead, you need to know the 80 percent people have heard of."

That's because the show, he says, isn't written for the contestants. It's written for the people playing along at home, who need to feel they have a fighting chance to keep up.

And:

Craig won $250,000 in the Tournament of Champions. He later told his fellow Tournament of Champion contestants about his system. One playfully ribbed him for cheating. Craig is quick to attack anyone who levels the accusation seriously.

"Everybody that wants to succeed at a game is going to practice at the game," he says. "You can practice haphazardly, or you can practice efficiently. And that's what I did."

He discusses his system here:

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Thinking about what you have to do to prepare for a challenge was more likely to lead to success than imagining the victory:

Via PsyBlog:

Outcome and process have been put head-to-head experimentally by Pham and Taylor (1999) who had students either visualise their ultimate goal of doing well in an exam or the steps they would take to reach that goal, i.e.  studying.

The results were clear-cut. Participants who visualised themselves reading and gaining the required skills and knowledge, spent longer actually studying and got better grades in the exam.

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Researchers found clear connections between the music parents enjoyed and what their adolescent kids liked:

In this article, the continuity in music taste from parents to their children is discussed via a multi-actor design. In our models music preferences of 325 adolescents and both their parents were linked, with parental and adolescent educational level as covariates. Parents' preferences for different types of music that had been popular when they were young were subsumed under the general labels of Pop, Rock and Highbrow. Current adolescent music preferences resolved into Pop, Rock, Highbrow and Dance. Among partners in a couple, tastes were similar; for both generations, education was linked to taste; and parental preferences predicted adolescent music choices. More specifically, the preference of fathers and mothers for Pop was associated with adolescent preferences for Pop and Dance. Parents' preferences for Rock seemed to indicate their daughters would also like Rock music, but not their sons. Parental passion for Highbrow music was associated with Highbrow preferences among their children. It is concluded that preferences for cultural artifacts such as (popular) music show continuity from generation to generation.

Source: "Intergenerational Continuity of Taste: Parental and Adolescent Music Preferences" from Social Forces (2011) 90 (1): 297-319.

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The connection between "up" and "happy" and "down" and "sad" goes deeper than we might think.

Activating the mental metaphor of "up" can cause you to think happier thoughts and recollect more positive memories:

Via Science Daily:

Moving marbles upward caused participants to remember more positive life experiences, and moving them downward to remember more negative experiences, according to Daniel Casasanto (MPI and Donders Institute, Nijmegen) and Katinka Dijkstra (Erasmus University, Rotterdam). 'Meaningless' motor actions can make people remember the good times or the bad.

And:

"These data suggest that spatial metaphors for emotion aren't just in language," Casasanto says, "linguistic metaphors correspond to mental metaphors, and activating the mental metaphor 'good is up' can cause us to think happier thoughts."

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Yes. Experiencing something with a friend makes the two of you more likely to agree on your impression of it:

Two studies examine differences in participants’ moment‐to‐moment and retrospective evaluations of an experience depending on whether they are alone or in the presence of another person. Findings support our hypotheses that joint consumption leads to similar patterns or “coherence” in moment‐to‐moment evaluations and that greater coherence leads to more positive retrospective evaluations. We trace the emergence of coherence to processes of mimicry and emotional contagion in experiment 1 by comparing evaluations for pairs of participants who could see each other’s expression with pairs who could not do so and in experiment 2 by coding participants’ facial expressions and head movements for direct evidence of contagion.

Source: "Consuming with Others: Social Influences on Moment-to-Moment and Retrospective Evaluations of an Experience" from Journal of Consumer Research.

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Facebook is more likely to be used to forge social ties and combat loneliness. Twitter is more about social procrastination.

Via the excellent BPS Research Digest:

People who used Facebook mostly for socialising tended to score more highly on sociability and neuroticism (consistent with past research suggesting that shy people use the site to forge social ties and combat loneliness). Social use of Twitter correlated with higher sociability and openness (but not neuroticism) and with lower scores on conscientiousness. This suggests that social Twitter users don't use it so much to combat loneliness, but more as a form of social procrastination.

As an informational tool, Facebook users "seek and share information as a way of avoiding more cognitively demanding sources such as journal articles and newspaper reports."

Twitter users are the opposite: they use the site for cognitive stimulation without socializing:

The researchers interpreted these patterns as suggesting that Facebook users seek and share information as a way of avoiding more cognitively demanding sources such as journal articles and newspaper reports. Twitter users, by contrast, use the site for its cognitive stimulation - as a way of uncovering useful information and material without socialising (this was particularly true for older participants).

Overall, Facebook is more about people and Twitter is more about sharing information:

Simplifying the results, one might say that Facebook is the more social of the two social networking sites, whereas Twitter is more about sharing and exchanging information.

Take the results with a grain of salt though. Personality explained less than 20% of why people used either service, the sample was primarily female and all data was self-reported.

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Via Harvard Business Review:

A group of participants suffered an average IQ drop of 17.4 points during an experiment in which they were ranked by their intelligence scores, suggesting that simply being ranked can profoundly diminish some people's ability to express their cognitive ability, says a team led by Read Montague of Virginia Tech. Not everyone in the experiment responded this way—some participants' scores even improved.

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Potentially a lot. A piece in the LA Times covers a lot of research related to how birth month affects who we are.

Winter births (Born Dec. 22 to March 20):

• More likely to be obese.
• Winter babies under 45 were more likely to be novelty-seekers. Oddly, those over 45 were less likely to chase the new.
• More likely to develop schizophrenia. Impressively, this has been confirmed in more than 200 studies.

Spring births (Born March 21 to June 21)

• They're more likely to be tall.
• More likely to suffer from Multiple Sclerosis.

Summer births (Born June 22 to Sept. 22)

• More likely to be night owls.
• More likely to be lefties
• More like to have Type 1 Diabetes.

Fall births (Born Sept. 23 to Dec. 21)

• More likely to live longer.
• More likely to have food allergies.

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Women with feminine faces get sick less often.

Interesting, because I've posted before that men with masculine faces have better immune systems too:

The current study addressed whether rated femininity, attractiveness, and health in female faces are associated with numerous indices of self-reported health history (number of colds/stomach bugs/frequency of antibiotic use) in a sample of 105 females. It was predicted that all three rating variables would correlate negatively with bouts of illness (with the exception of rates of stomach infections), on the assumption that aspects of facial appearance signal mate quality. The results showed partial support for this prediction, in that there was a general trend for both facial femininity and attractiveness to correlate negatively with the reported number of colds in the preceding twelve months and with the frequency of antibiotic use in the last three years and the last twelve months. Rated facial femininity (as documented in September) was also associated with days of flu experienced in the period spanning the November-December months. However, rated health did not correlate with any of the health indices (albeit one marginal result with antibiotic use in the last twelve months). The results lend support to previous findings linking facial femininity to health and suggest that facial femininity may be linked to some aspects of disease resistance but not others.

Source: "Female facial appearance and health" from Evolutionary Psychology 10(1): 66-77

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Russians showed increased attention to negative vs positive pictures, unlike Americans. Priming Russian symbols increased attention to negativity as well:

This research provides experimental evidence for cultural influence on one of the most basic elements of emotional processing: attention to positive versus negative stimuli. To this end, we focused on Russian culture, which is characterized by brooding and melancholy. In Study 1, Russians spent significantly more time looking at negative than positive pictures, whereas Americans did not show this tendency. In Study 2, Russian Latvians were randomly primed with symbols of each culture, after which we measured the speed of recognition for positive versus negative trait words. Biculturals were significantly faster in recognizing negative words (as compared with baseline) when primed with Russian versus Latvian cultural symbols. Greater identification with Russian culture facilitated this effect. We provide a theoretical discussion of mental processes underlying cultural differences in emotion research.

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What our neighbors buy affects what we buy, as does our names, the weather, and the type of floor a store has.

Music manipulates us into spending in flower shops and restaurants.

Which products are next to each other on the shelf influences what we buy. In fact, one product can catch "cooties" from another.

Attractive salespeople mess with our heads too, especially if they touch the products. Truth is, we're more satisfied after buying from good-looking people.

Stores use lots of tricks to get us to spend. Limits on how many items we can purchase make us purchase more. So does stocking fewer items.

The word sale makes us less likely to comparison shop and yellow tags fool us into thinking we're getting a discount even when we're not.

Retail therapy does work, but being happy can end up sapping our self-control in the face of tempting sales.

Materialism may be connected to unhappiness but buying generic products can reduce your self-esteem.

Luckily there are fast, easy tricks to avoid buying too much and breaking a budget.

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Yes. Massage twice a week for five weeks improved math scores.

Via PsyBlog:

Twenty-six adults were given a chair massage and 24 control group adults were asked to relax in the massage chair for 15 minutes, two times per week for five weeks. On the first and last days of the study they were monitored for EEG, before, during and after the sessions. In addition, before and after the sessions they performed math computations, they completed POMS Depression and State Anxiety Scales and they provided a saliva sample for cortisol. At the beginning of the sessions they completed Life Events, Job Stress and Chronic POMS Depression Scales. Group by repeated measures and post hoc analyses revealed the following: 1) frontal delta power increased for both groups, suggesting relaxation; 2) the massage group showed decreased frontal alpha and beta power (suggesting enhanced alertness); while the control group showed increased alpha and beta power; 3) the massage group showed increased speed and accuracy on math computations while the control group did not change; 4) anxiety levels were lower following the massage but not the control sessions, although mood state was less depressed following both the massage and control sessions; 5) salivary cortisol levels were lower following the massage but not the control sessions but only on the first day; and 6) at the end of the 5 week period depression scores were lower for both groups but job stress score were lower only for the massage group.

Source: "Massage therapy reduces anxiety and enhances EEG pattern of alertness and math computations." from Int J Neurosci. 1996 Sep;86(3-4):197-205.

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Don't use round numbers. $524.66 sounds more sincere than $500. 1 hour and 13 minutes sounds more legit than 1 hour.

Via Harvard Business Review:

Consumers are more likely to believe that a company or product will deliver on its promise when the promise is conveyed in fine-grained rather than coarse units, the researchers say.

A beard can help too.

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Via Eurekalert:

A woman's memory of an experience is less likely to be accurate than a man's if it was unpleasant and emotionally provocative, according to research undertaken by University of Montreal researchers at Louis-H Lafontaine Hospital. "Very few studies have looked at how 'valence' and 'arousal' affect memories independently of each other, that is to say, how attractive or repulsive we find an experience and how emotionally provocative it is," said corresponding author Dr. Marc Lavoie, of the university's Department of Psychiatry and the hospital's Fernand-Seguin Research Center. "Our test relied on photos – we found firstly that highly arousing pictures blur women's capacity to determine whether they've seen it before, and secondly that women have a clearer memory of attractive experiences than men. Arousal has an enhancing effect on the memory of men however, as does 'low valence' or unpleasantness."

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More time to think makes us more ethical.

Via Harvard Business Review:

87% of research subjects opted not to lie for self-gain if they were given three minutes to contemplate their choice, compared with just 56% of participants who were told to make an immediate decision, says a team led by J. Keith Murnighan of Northwestern University.

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Could mean you desire a close bond.

Via Marie Clare:

Dropping off to sleep straight after sex is a sign that you and your partner have a strong and meaningful relationship, according to evolutionary psychologists.

The team from the University of Michigan and Albright College in Pennsylvania claim nodding off after sex is associated with a greater desire for bonding and affection.

'The more one's partner was likely to fall asleep after sex, the stronger the desire for bonding,' says lead author, Daniel Kruger.

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Via Eurekalert:

Across six studies, Josh Ackerman of the MIT Sloan School of Management and his colleagues found that although people think that women are the first to confess love and feel happier when they receive such confessions, it is actually men who confess love first and feel happier. They also found that saying "I love you" makes the man in a couple feel most happy if the confession occurs before the couple has sex and makes women most happy if the confession happens after sex.

"This work shows that our intuitions are not always correct," Ackerman says. "When and why we express romantic love are guided by deep-seated motivations that are best understood in an economic framework. Love confessions are akin to economic resources that people use to negotiate evolved romantic interests." The studies were published in the June 2011 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

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Media and use proved to be much harder to resist than tobacco or alcohol.

Via Science Daily:

Trying to resist that late-night tweet or checking your work email again? The bad news is that desires for work and entertainment often win out in the daily struggle for self-control, according to a new study that measures various desires and their regulation in daily life...

...In the new study of desire regulation, 205 adults wore devices that recorded a total of 7,827 reports about their daily desires. Desires for sleep and sex were the strongest, while desires for media and work proved the hardest to resist. Even though tobacco and alcohol are thought of as addictive, desires associated with them were the weakest, according to the study.

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Fortune Magazine posts an excerpt from Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha's new book "The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career" offering solid tips on expanding your network the right way.

Via Fortune Magazine:

Reid's rules

In the next day: Look at your calendar for the past six months and identify the five people you spend the most time with -- are you happy with their influence on you?

In the next week: Introduce two people who do not know each other but ought to. Then think about a challenge you face and ask for an introduction to a connection in your network who could help.

Imagine you got laid off from your job today. Who are the 10 people you'd e-mail for advice? Don't wait -- invest in those relationships now.

In the next month: Identify a weaker tie with whom you'd like to build an alliance. Help him by giving him a small gift -- forward an article or job posting.

Create an "interesting people fund" to which you automatically funnel a certain percentage of your paycheck. Use it to pay for coffees and the occasional plane ticket to meet new people and shore up existing relationships.

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I've posted a great deal about what we can tell about people by looking at their faces:

• personality
• female CEO success
• likelihood of dementia
• if they're cooperative
• sexual orientation
• criminality
• if they're trustworthy
• how much a woman orgasms

and did a piece about it in Wired Magazine.

Here's a new study showing that facial width-to-height ratio is correlated with achievement drive in US Presidents:

Facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) has been associated with aggression, unethical behavior, company profit, and dominance; however, it is currently unclear whether this facial trait relates to politically relevant character traits. Here we examine fWHR in an elite sample of political leaders, former US presidents (n = 29), who were rated for forcefulness, pacifism, inflexibility, and achievement drive; traits potentially linked to fWHR. The first three of these traits were unrelated to fWHR, but we found a positive association between fWHR and achievement drive (r = .58, p < .01), and a negative association to the trait “poise and polish” (r = −.38, p < .05). These results extend associations of behavior with facial structure to individuals in the highest echelons of power, suggest connections from biology to politically relevant character traits, and indicate that fWHR may also be associated with achievement-striving alongside associations with dominance and aggression.

Source: "Facial width-to-height ratio predicts achievement drive in US presidents" from Personality and Individual Differences

Adds to an interesting list of studies showing how appearance is so important in politics.

Research also shows we can tell if someone is a Republican or Democrat just by looking at their face and conservative politicians are better looking than liberals.

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