Imagine that your Facebook network was "Brahmin":

India’s centuries old caste system hasn’t gone away in the digital age. It’s moved online. Global Post reports that Indians have created thousands of groups on the social networking site Orkut related to caste. Examples include the Brahmins of India, The Great Marathas, and i love intercaste marriage. One research company estimated that some 485,000 people are members of 32 different caste-related communities.

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Yes, meter maids are evil and must be destroyed. Sorry, I don't mean to sound like an anti-government whacko. We've got real proof here:

Municipalities have revenue motives for enforcing traffic laws in addition to public‐safety motives because many traffic offenses are punished via fines and the issuing municipality often retains the revenue. Anecdotal evidence supports this revenue motive. We empirically test the revenue motive using a panel of annual data for North Carolina counties from 1990 to 2003. We find that significantly more tickets are issued in the year following a decline in revenue but that the issuance of traffic tickets does not decline in years following revenue increases. Elasticity estimates reveal that a 10 percent decrease in negative revenue growth results in a 6.4 percent increase in the growth rate of traffic tickets. Our results suggest that tickets are used as a revenue‐generation tool rather than solely a means to increase public safety.

Source: "Red Ink in the Rearview Mirror: Local Fiscal Conditions and the Issuance of Traffic Tickets" from The Journal of Law and Economics

Wanna learn some fascinating stuff about traffic? Yes, I said "fascinating" and "traffic" in the same sentence. Check out this book.

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Yes, definite moral hazard territory. Two studies show that we will happily throw healthy behavior out the window if we think medicine has us covered:

In the face of rising rates of diabetes, many states have passed laws requiring health insurance plans to cover medical treatments for the disease. Although supporters of the mandates expect them to improve the health of diabetics, the mandates have the potential to generate a moral hazard to the extent that medical treatments might displace individual behavioral improvements. Another possibility is that the mandates do little to improve insurance coverage for most individuals, as previous research on benefit mandates has suggested that mandates often duplicate what plans already cover. To examine the effects of these mandates, we employ a triple‐differences methodology comparing the change in the gap in body mass index (BMI) between diabetics and nondiabetics in mandate and nonmandate states. We find that mandates do generate a moral hazard problem, with diabetics exhibiting higher BMIs after the adoption of these mandates.

Source: "Diabetes Treatments and Moral Hazard" from The Journal of Law and Economics

And:

This research investigates consumer reactions to the marketing of drugs and supplements and the consequences for a healthy lifestyle. A series of experiments provides evidence that drug marketing undermines intentions to engage in health‐protective behaviors (i.e., a boomerang effect). The boomerang arises from two psychological mechanisms: (1) drugs reduce risk perceptions and perceived importance of, and motivation to engage in, complementary health‐protective behaviors, and (2) drugs are associated with poor health that reduces self‐efficacy and perceived ability to engage in complementary health‐protective behaviors. A combined intervention accompanying a drug remedy that targets both motivation and ability mitigates the drug boomerang on a healthy lifestyle.

Source: "How Does Drug and Supplement Marketing Affect a Healthy Lifestyle?" from Journal of Consumer Research

Maybe they can make a Lipitor relish that we can add as a condiment to cheeseburgers. (Pfizer, I get a nickel for every jar you sell.)

If you want to read a great true story about the dark side of medicine, I recommend this book.

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Is "House" right? Do all patients lie? Here you can find out why you should show your doctor pictures of kittens before your next surgery. Here is best time to have that surgery. Here is why you should be nice to your doctor. And here is the answer to the perennial debate over whether you should pull a band-aid off slow or fast.

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Venting Reduces Anger
One of my pet peeves is how widely the notion of catharsis has been accepted. People think they will feel better by “getting it all out” or even that a hockey game is a release for their aggression. Aggression begets aggression. People are better off taking a deep breath and counting to 10 than “venting” their hostilities. — Jann Gumbiner, Ph.D., professor at the University of California–Irvine College of Medicine 

Opposites Attract A persistent myth is that in romance, opposites attract. In fact, one of the most powerful predictors of liking is similarity, regardless of the type of trait—personality, values, interests, or physical characteristics. — Andrew Galperin, graduate student in social psychology at UCLA 

Men Aren’t Romantic
Many people think men are less romantic than women. Yet men fall in love faster (because they are so visual); men tend to be more dependent on their girlfriends or wives for intimacy; men are over two times more likely to kill themselves when a relationship ends; and men show just as much activity in brain regions associated with romantic passion. — Helen Fisher, Ph.D., anthropology professor at Rutgers University

If you want more answers to curious questions I recommend this book.

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At some point we all wish we could turn back the clock. But is it as easy as merely acting as if you were still younger? To a good degree, the answer may be yes:

Prof Langer recruited a group of elderly men all in their late 70s or 80s for what she described as a "week of reminiscence". They were not told they were taking part in a study into ageing, an experiment that would transport them 20 years back in time.

The psychologist wanted to know if she could put the mind back 20 years would the body show any changes.

The men were split into two groups. They would both be spending a week at a retreat outside of Boston.

But while the first group, the control, really would be reminiscing about life in the 50s, the other half would be in a timewarp. Surrounded by props from the 50s the experimental group would be asked to act as if it was actually 1959.

They watched films, listened to music from the time and had discussions about Castro marching on Havana and the latest Nasa satellite launch - all in the present tense.

Dr Langer believed she could reconnect their minds with their younger and more vigorous selves by placing them in an environment connected with their own past lives.

And she was determined to remove any prompt for them to behave as anything but healthy individuals. The retreat was not equipped with rails or any gadgets that would help older people. Right from the off she was determined to ensure they looked after themselves.

One man discarded his walking stick

When they got off the bus at the retreat, Prof Langer did not help the men carry their suitcases in. "I told them they could move them an inch at a time, they could unpack them right at the bus and take up a shirt at a time."

The men were entirely immersed in an era when they were 20 years younger.

Understandably, Prof Langer herself had doubts. "You have to understand, when these people came to see if they could be in the study and they were walking down the hall to get to my office, they looked like they were on their last legs, so much so that I said to my students 'why are we doing this? It's too risky'."

But soon the men were making their own meals. They were making their own choices. They weren't being treated as incompetent or sick.

Pretty soon she could see a difference. Over the days, Prof Langer began to notice that they were walking faster and their confidence had improved. By the final morning one man had even decided he could do without his walking stick.

As they waited for the bus to return them to Boston, Prof Langer asked one of the men if he would like to play a game of catch, within a few minutes it had turned into an impromptu game of "touch" American football.

Obviously this kind of anecdotal evidence does not count for much in a study.

But Prof Langer took physiological measurements both before and after the week and found the men improved across the board. Their gait, dexterity, arthritis, speed of movement, cognitive abilities and their memory was all measurably improved.

Their blood pressure dropped and, even more surprisingly, their eyesight and hearing got better. Both groups showed improvements, but the experimental group improved the most.

Prof Langer believes that by encouraging the men's minds to think younger their bodies followed and actually became "younger".

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The rich and powerful may have more stuff than you but that doesn't mean they enjoy life more, right? Ummmmm... you may not want to hear this:

People have typically viewed the benefits that accrue with social status primarily from the perspective of external rewards. A new paper in the February 1st issue of Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier suggests that there are internal rewards as well.

Dr. Martinez and colleagues found that increased social status and increased social support correlated with the density of dopamine D2/D3 receptors in the striatum, a region of the brain that plays a central role in reward and motivation, where dopamine plays a critical role in both of these behavioral processes.

The researchers looked at social status and social support in normal healthy volunteers who were scanned using positron emission tomography (PET), a technology that allowed them to image dopamine type 2 receptors in the brain.

This data suggests that people who achieve greater social status are more likely to be able to experience life as rewarding and stimulating because they have more targets for dopamine to act upon within the striatum.

If you want to learn more about the brain, I recommend this book.

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The authors demonstrate that partitioning an aggregate quantity of a resource (e.g., food, money) into smaller units reduces the consumed quantity or the rate of consumption of that resource. Partitions draw attention to the consumption decision by introducing a small transaction cost; that is, they provide more decision-making opportunities so that prudent consumers can control consumption. Thus, people are better able to constrain consumption when resources associated with a desirable activity (which they are trying to control) are partitioned rather than when they are aggregated. This effect of partitioning is demonstrated for the consumption of chocolates (Study 1) and gambles (Study 2). In Study 3, process measures reveal that partitioning increases recall accuracy and decision times. Importantly, the effect of partitioning diminishes when consumers are not trying to regulate consumption (Studies 1 and 3). Finally, Study 4 explores how habituation may decrease the amount of attention that partitions draw to consumption. In this context, partitions control consumption to a greater extent when the nature of partitions changes frequently

Source: "The effects of partitions on controlling consumption" from the Journal of Marketing Research

If you want to get a better handle on your finances, I recommend this book.

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No, the answer isn't copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. Believe it or not, it's interruption:

Six studies demonstrate that interrupting a consumption experience can make pleasant experiences more enjoyable and unpleasant experiences more irritating, even though consumers avoid breaks in pleasant experiences and choose breaks in unpleasant experiences. Across a variety of hedonic experiences (e.g., listening to noises or songs, sitting in a massage chair), the authors observe that breaks disrupt hedonic adaptation and, as a result, intensify the subsequent experience.

Source: "Interrupted Consumption: Disrupting Adaptation to Hedonic Experiences" from the Journal of Marketing Research

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Yes. Positive illusions about your partner's attractiveness correlate with relationship quality:

The present research examined the existence of positive illusions about a partner's physical attractiveness and its relations to relationship quality. Positive illusions were assumed to exist when individuals rated their partner as more attractive than their partner rated him or herself. In two Dutch community samples of 117 and 203 married or cohabiting heterosexual couples, both partners rated their own and their partner's facial and bodily attractiveness. In Study 2, both partners completed three measures of relationship quality. Both studies found evidence for the existence of positive illusions about a partner's physical attractiveness. Moreover, Study 2 found clear positive illusion actor effects for relationship quality. This association differed by age of couples.

Source: "Positive illusions about a partner's physical attractiveness and relationship quality" from the journal "Personal Relationships"

This study jives with my experience but I'm not sure you want to take it this far.

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This guy wasn't the only one who felt excluded in the cold. Seems like there's a natural association between the two:

Metaphors such as icy stare depict social exclusion using cold-related concepts; they are not to be taken literally and certainly do not imply reduced temperature. Two experiments, however, revealed that social exclusion literally feels cold. Experiment 1 found that participants who recalled a social exclusion experience gave lower estimates of room temperature than did participants who recalled an inclusion experience. In Experiment 2, social exclusion was directly induced through an on-line virtual interaction, and participants who were excluded reported greater desire for warm food and drink than did participants who were included. These findings are consistent with the embodied view of cognition and support the notion that social perception involves physical and perceptual content. The psychological experience of coldness not only aids understanding of social interaction, but also is an integral part of the experience of social exclusion.

Source: "Cold and Lonely: Does Social Exclusion Literally Feel Cold?" Chen-Bo Zhong. 2008; Psychological Science

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Turns out merely being nostalgic has notable affects on making you feel less lonely:

Four studies tested whether nostalgia can counteract reductions in perceived social support caused by loneliness. Loneliness reduced perceptions of social support but increased nostalgia. Nostalgia, in turn, increased perceptions of social support. Thus, loneliness affected perceived social support in two distinct ways. Whereas the direct effect of loneliness was to reduce perceived social support, the indirect effect of loneliness was to increase perceived social support via nostalgia. This restorative function of nostalgia was particularly apparent among resilient persons. Nostalgia is a psychological resource that protects and fosters mental health.

Source: "Counteracting Loneliness: On the Restorative Function of Nostalgia" in the journal "Psychological Science"

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No, I'm not talking about Disney World:

Wanna be happier? I recommend this book.

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This paper models lovemaking as a signaling game. In the act of love-making, a man and a woman send each other possibly deceptive signals about their true state of ecstasy. Each has a prior belief about the other's state of ecstasy. These prior beliefs are associated with the other's sexual response capacity, which varies in different ways for men and women over the life-cycle. The model predicts that love, formally defined as a mixture of altruism and possessiveness, increases the probability of faking ecstasy, but more so for women than for men. In addition, the model predicts that age has a greater effect on the probability of faking if the partners are in love than if they are not. These predictions are tested with data from the 2000 Orgasm Survey. Besides supporting many of the predictions, the data also reveal a positive relationship between education and the tendency to fake.

Full paper here. Hat tip: @wootz_steel

You could see this as a reassuring finding: If your partner appears to be having an orgasm, you're either a great lover or they're in love with you enough to fake it.

BTW: Best faked orgasm scene ever.

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Recession got you down? Need to make a quick buck? Have a kidney you don't really need? Where is the best market to be selling chunks of yourself anyway?:

Now, black-market organ dealers don’t do a great job of filing taxes, but here are some prices based on rumored deals and reports from the World Heath Organization. In India, a kidney fetches around $20,000. In China, buyers will pay $40,000 or more. A good, healthy kidney from Israel goes for $160,000.

Don’t expect to pocket all that dough, though. “The person giving up the organ only gets a fraction of the fee,” says Sally Satel, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute think tank who studies the prices paid by legal and illegal organ-donor operations. After the organ broker—the guy who sets up your kidney-for-cash transaction—takes his cut, he needs to pay for travel, the surgeon, medical supplies and a few “look-the-other-way” payoffs. Most people get $1,000 to $10,000 for their kidney (probably much less than you were hoping for).

The best bet is to wait until compensation for organs is legalized in the U.S.—the Organ Trafficking Prohibition Act of 2009 would allow payment to donors, but it stalled in Congress—because there’s certainly a market for kidneys. Last summer, a man offering one of his for $100,000 (plus medical expenses) on Craigslist received several offers until the Web site removed his post. And you could probably hold out for even more. In 1999, before eBay delisted a kidney put up for auction, bidders drove the price up to $5.75 million.

If you want to read a great true story about the dark side of medicine, I recommend this book.

Here you can find out why you should show your doctor pictures of kittens before your next surgery. Here is best time to have that surgery. Here is why you should be nice to your doctor. And here is the answer to the perennial debate over whether you should pull a band-aid off slow or fast.

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Unless this is your child, you might be worried that someone is out to nab your kid. Don't be:

The truth is that no one is trying to steal your baby. It doesn't matter what kind of ID tags your hospital employs, or how many surveillance cameras are mounted in the hallway. The incidence of nonfamily infant abductions is so impossibly low—the actual crime so rare in practice—that it hardly matters at all...

The NCMEC has systematically compiled information on every case of baby-snatching (PDF) since 1983, a 26-year stretch in which it has recorded a total of 267 incidents. Over the same period, 108 million babies were born in the United States. That is to say, the chance a stranger will steal your newborn—from your hospital room, your home nursery, or anywhere else—is about one in 400,000. That's a very, very small number. Here's some perspective: Your baby's odds of getting snatched are considerably smaller—five times smaller, in fact—than her odds of being struck and killed by a lightning bolt.

Okay, so your kid is safe from abduction. But will they be attacked by terrorists?

Now here's what you should worry about.

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I'm not a huge football fan but I did enjoy reading Michael Lewis's book "The Blind Side." How likely is it that a high school football player will eventually not only make it to the pros and to the Super Bowl, but be on the winning team?

Here's a list of things you didn't know about sports.

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The blog has been getting a lot of attention lately and I'm quite flattered.

Last night I realized "Barking Up The Wrong Tree" is now listed in the blogroll of the New York Times' "Economix" section.

That was pretty cool.

Lately it has been cited on a number of my favorite sites on the internet, including:

The Economist

The Washington Post

The Atlantic

Andrew Sullivan's blog

Ben Casnocha's blog

Jonah Lehrer's blog "Frontal Cortex"

Ryan Sager's "Neuroworld"

and

Marginal Revolution where Tyler Cowen has said many kind things and repeatedly linked to the site.

I never expected any of this. To everyone who reads the blog, I sincerely thank you. You don't know how much all this has meant to me.

-Eric

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Yes, he does:

Abstract: Human fathers face paternity uncertainty and are expected to use cues of relatedness to adjust their investment. So far, the main cue hypothesised to account for paternity assessment is facial phenotypic resemblance between a father and his child. However, previous studies showing a discriminative paternal investment either relied on fathers' perceptions of resemblance (which differs from actual resemblance, as perceived resemblance could be socially biased), or manipulated facial resemblance. In this study, we investigate in a real-life situation, whether (1) the perception of child facial resemblance and (2) the likelihood of parental investment were predicted by actual facial resemblance to self, for both parents. The actual facial resemblance of 79 French children was quantified by testing external judges. Data on ascription of resemblance and parental investment were collected in private for each parent. First, ascription of facial resemblance was found to be consistent between the two parents and to match actual resemblance to the father. Second, emotional closeness as reported by fathers, but not by mothers, was found to be predicted by actual facial resemblance to self. This suggests that paternity uncertainty has favored the use of facial phenotype matching in fathers.

Source: Are parents' perceptions of offspring facial resemblance consistent with actual resemblance? Effects on parental investment from Evolution & Human Behavior by Alexandra Alvergne, Charlotte Faurie, Michel Raymond

So does this make mom the parent who is completely fair with her love? Not by a long shot.

But you're different, you say? You won't be like your parents? Sorry, studies say you'll be just like them.

Or maybe the best solution is to get the benefits of having a kid without all the hassle.

If you want to learn more about the science behind mating and relationships I recommend this book.

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A study shows that because gamers frequently "resolve threats" during game play they would experience fewer "threat severity variables" in their dreams. That's right: blowing away zombies and defending the USA on your Xbox could mean fewer nightmares:

Revonsuo proposes an evolutionary theory of dreaming in which dreams allow an individual to prepare for real world threats in the safety of the virtual setting of the dream world. Based upon previous work examining the dreams of video game players, it was hypothesized that high-end gamers would experience fewer threat simulation dreams because of frequent threat resolution rehearsal during game play. Subjects were asked to report a night before dream and fill out surveys regarding their gaming history, media use, and dream experiences. Using a factor analysis, support for the main hypothesis was found. Individuals with a history of game play experienced fewer threat severity variables in their dreams. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Source: The relationship between video game play and threat simulation dreams. from Dreaming - Vol 19, Iss 4 by Gackenbach, Jayne; Kuruvilla, Beena

I know what you're thinking: Couldn't all that violent gameplay CAUSE nightmares? Nope:

Often the question arises whether TV viewing or playing computer games, especially those of violent and aggressive content, has negative effects on children's sleep patterns and dreaming. Empirical data on this topic, however, are scarce. Two hundred fifty-two schoolchildren (range: 9 to 13 years) completed a questionnaire about media use and nightmares. The findings indicates that interindividual differences in nightmare frequency were not explained by interindividual differences in TV viewing or computer game playing habits. In addition, no effect of the TV films the evening before completing the questionnaire on the dreams the subsequent night could be demonstrated. Since the approach could not rule out an effect of media use habits on nightmares, the next step will be a longitudinal study eliciting the media use habits and the occurrence of nightmares by applying self-rated scales as well as information obtained by parents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

Source: TV viewing, computer game playing and nightmares in school children. from Dreaming - Vol 19, Iss 4 by Schredl, Michael; Anders, Anne; Hellriegel, Sarah; Rehm, Anna

Okay, there's gotta be SOME downside to all that game playing, right? Not really. They can make your dreams more BIZARRE but that might actually be an indication that you're a creative person:

In a series of studies, J. Gackenbach has been mapping the effects of heavy video game play on consciousness, including dreaming. The reason that gamers are being investigated is that they represent a group of people who are engaging in the most immersive media experience widely available today. With its audio and visual interactive nature as well as the long hours often required to master a game, they are an opportune group to study media effects upon consciousness. In this study, the focus was on dream bizarreness. Dream bizarreness has been variously thought to be the differentiator between waking and dreaming thought, an indication of creativity, and most recently, as a model for solving the binding problem in consciousness. Using A. Revonsuo’s and C. Salmivalli’s scale for dream content analysis, it was found that high-end gamers evidenced more bizarre dreams than did low-end gamers in two of three types of bizarreness categories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Source: Video game play and dream bizarreness.from Dreaming by Gackenbach, Jayne; Kuruvilla, Beena; Dopko, Raelyne

Bizarre and creative? Sounds good to me. In fact, you might even dream of Tetris blocks. It's quite common.

So go play some games. It'll increase your reaction time and improve your vision. Your dreams might be more interesting, they might have rotating blocks, they probably won't be nightmares and they're less likely to have unresolved conflict in them. (And if you're on Xbox Live, my gamertag is "bakadesuyo.")

Happy gaming and sweet dreams.

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No, that's crazy-talk. However, a lot of people believe it:

People are reluctant to exchange lottery tickets, a result that previous investigators have attributed to anticipated regret. The authors suggest that people's subjective likelihood judgments also make them disinclined to switch. Four studies examined likelihood judgments with respect to exchanged and retained lottery tickets and found that (a) exchanged tickets are judged more likely to win a lottery than are retained tickets and (b) exchanged tickets are judged more likely to win the more aversive it would be if the ticket did win. The authors provide evidence that this effect occurs because the act of imagining an exchanged ticket winning the lottery increases the belief that such an event is likely to occur. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)

Source: Another look at why people are reluctant to exchange lottery tickets. from Journal of Personality and Social Psychology - Vol 97, Iss 5 by Risen, Jane L.; Gilovich, Thomas

If you want gambling and entertainment, this is probably the best deal you're going to get.

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