New research indicates that dogs and humans have some things in common in the willpower department.
The Daily Beast ranked America’s “craziest” cities by psychiatrists per capita, stress, eccentricity, and drinking.
Psychologists have found that your face tells people a lot about your political leanings.
University of Scranton psychology professor Carole Slotterback analyzed about five years’ worth of children’s letters to Santa that were sent to her city’s central post office.
The psychologist Barry Schwartz’s book The Paradox of Choice (here’s his TED talk on the topic) was, for me at least, very persuasive. It made a compelling if counterintuitive argument: even though many people (economists especially) argue that more choice is almost always a good thing, Schwartz argued that too much choice is actually a bad thing, causing decision paralysis and unhappiness.
The first public passenger railroad opened in England in 1825. By the 1860’s, railway accidents had killed, maimed, and otherwise traumatized so many that doctors had to coin a term to describe the shock suffered by rail crash survivors; they called it “railway spine,” and the debate that surrounded it planted the seeds for the study of what we know today as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
John List and I stumbled onto the original, never-analyzed data from the original illumination experiments done at the Hawthorne Plant. These studies gave rise to what is now known as the Hawthorne Effect.
We know Freakonomics readers love brain teasers. We hope you’ll test your brain on these five puzzlers. The results, completely anonymous, will be compiled and analyzed by the Vision Lab and the Social Neuroscience and Psychopathology Lab at Harvard University. Have fun, for science!
Implanting false memories of childhood tastes can affect adult food choices.
Driving a car can be depersonalizing. That’s why drivers use bumper stickers, bobble-heads, fish brake lights, racing stripes, etc. to show others on the road their personalities, explains Tom Vanderbilt in his book, Traffic. A recent study by Colorado State University psychologist William Szlemko found a link between road rage and the number — but not content — of personalized . . .
John Tierney hits a home run with this fantastic column about a recent paper by Keith Chen (whose work on capuchin monkeys has previously caught our attention). The Monty Hall problem is as follows: You are chosen to compete on Let’s Make a Deal. There are three curtains. Behind one of the curtains is something wonderful like a new car. . . .
Player similarities in the NBA: a network diagram. A “Who’s Who” of modern physicists. How accurate are most psychology experiments?. Military experts fear “robotic terrorism.”
Prenatal lead exposure linked to male obesity. (Earlier) Researchers test Iraqi teenagers’ self-esteem. Cities in Japan, Sardinia, California boast the world’s longest-living populations. Helvetica makes list of “Top Ten new releases to inspire social change.” (Earlier)
… because today the Science journal published a short commentary [subscription required] written by myself and John List, on the topic of behavioral economics. Our piece begins like this: The discipline of economics is built on the shoulders of the mythical species Homo economicus. Unlike his uncle, Homo sapiens, H. economicus is unswervingly rational, completely selfish, and can effortlessly solve . . .
Victims of India’s ‘Kidney Kingpin’ speak (Earlier) Are midlife crises a global phenomenon? (Earlier) The ethics of execution More on the ‘R-word’… (Earlier)
The link between cannabis and cancer (Earlier) A scientific approach to tort reform What’s the optimal time of day for a psych test? (Earlier) Does junk food make prisoners more violent? (Earlier) (And earlier)
Is PTSD the only result for Iraq veterans? Just how dangerous is personal data on the Internet? (Earlier) How do people describe themselves with one word? An experiment. Is Jan. 21 truly the “most depressing day of the year”?
According to the S&P/Case-Shiller index of housing prices, home prices have fallen by about 6 percent in the United States on average over the last twelve months. By my rough calculations, that means that home owners have lost about $720 billion in wealth as a consequence. That is about $2,400 for every person in America, and $18,000 for the average . . .
Presidents of the United States don’t use e-mail, any more than they carry their own petty cash. But there are hazards in being unwired at the top, and among the greatest of these may be an inability to get bad news when you need it. Take President Bush, whose credibility suffered a hit this week as the U.S. intelligence community . . .
Dubner has blogged before about the difficulty of gathering accurate data from adults on subjects like racism. The problem, he noted, lies in people’s tendencies to give answers that are socially appropriate but don’t necessarily reflect their actual views. Children, however, are not often so guarded (or disingenuous, depending on how you look at it). As such, they can provide . . .
That is the very good question posed on the British Psychological Society’s research blog. The answers, provided by leading psychologists, are even better. In many cases, it’s not that the experiments haven’t been done, but that they can’t be, often for ethical or practical reasons. But even if the proposed experiments are only thought experiments, they are well worth reading. . . .