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May 07 2012
NCBI ROFL: Do women prefer more complex music around ovulation?
“The evolutionary origins of music are much debated. One theory holds that the ability to produce complex musical sounds might reflect qualities that are relevant in mate choice contexts and hence, that music is functionally analogous to the sexually-selected acoustic displays of some animals. If so, women may be expected to show heightened preferences for more complex music when they are most fertile. Here, we used computer-generated musical pieces and ovulation predictor kits to test this hypothesis. Our results indicate that women prefer more complex music in general; however, we found no evidence that their preference for more complex music increased around ovulation. Consequently, our findings are not consistent with the hypothesis that a heightened preference/bias in women for more complex music around ovulation could have played a role in the evolution of music. We go on to suggest future studies that could further investigate whether sexual selection played a role in the evolution of this universal aspect of human culture.”
Photo: flickr/Epiclectic
Thanks to BBoyButzemann for today’s ROFL!
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April 27 2012
NCBI ROFL: Why Miss Poland is more beautiful than generic med students.
Body mass index and waist: hip ratio are not enough to characterise female attractiveness.
“The assessment of characteristic body features of Miss Poland beauty contest finalists compared with the control group, can contribute to recognising the contemporary ideal of beauty promoted by the mass media. The studies of Playboy models and fashion models conducted so far have been limited to the following determinants of attractiveness: body mass index, waist:hip ratio, and waist:chest ratio, which only partially describe the body shape. We compared 20 body features of the finalists of Miss Poland 2004 beauty contest with those of the students of Medical Academy in Bydgoszcz. Discriminant analysis showed that the thigh girth-height index, waist: chest ratio, height, and body mass index had the greatest discrimination power distinguishing the two groups. A model of Miss Poland finalists figure assessment is presented which allows one to distinguish super-attractive women from the control group.”
Photo: flickr/georgereyes
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April 16 2012
NCBI ROFL: The effect of social support derived from World of Warcraft on negative psychological symptoms.
“Previous research examining players of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) suggests that players form meaningful relationships with each other. Other research indicates that people may derive social support from online sources, and this social support has been associated with greater well-being. This study used an online survey of players (N = 206) of the MMOG World of Warcraft (WoW) to examine if social support can be derived from MMOGs and to examine its relationship with negative psychological symptoms. Players of WoW were found to derive social support from playing and a positive relationship was found between game engagement and levels of in-game social support. Higher levels of in-game social support were associated with fewer negative psychological symptoms, although this effect was not maintained after accounting for social support derived from the offline sources. Additionally, a small subsample of players (n = 21) who played for 44 to 82 hours per week (M = 63.33) was identified. These players had significantly lower levels of offline social support and higher levels of negative symptoms compared to the rest of the sample. This study provides evidence that social support can be derived from ...
April 13 2012
NCBI ROFL: The economics of faking orgasms.
The economics of faking ecstasy.
“In this paper, we develop a signaling model of rational lovemaking. In the act of lovemaking, a man and a woman send each other possibly deceptive signals about their true state of ecstasy. For example, if one of the partners is not in ecstasy, then he or she may decide to fake it. The model predicts that (1) a higher cost of faking lowers the probability of faking; (2) middle-aged and old men are more likely to fake than young men; (3) young and old women are more likely to fake than middle-aged women; and (4) love, formally defined as a mixture of altruism and demand for togetherness, increases the likelihood of faking. The predictions are tested with data from the 2000 Orgasm Survey. Besides supporting the model’s predictions, the data also reveal an interesting positive relationship between education and the tendency to fake in both men and women.”
Photo: flickr/greggoconnell
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April 12 2012
NCBI ROFL: Hmm… I wonder if this illusion works on other body parts?
Touching my face with my supernumerary hand: a cheeky illusion.
“A self-touch paradigm elicits a surprising illusion. With the participant’s eyes closed, the examiner guides the participant’s right index finger to administer strokes and taps to the right side of the participant’s face. At the same time, the examiner strokes and taps the corresponding location on the left side of the participant’s face. Although the participant administered touch to only the right side of the face, this paradigm elicited the illusion of self-touch to both sides of the face, and the illusion often implicated a third, disconnected or disembodied, hand. We propose an explanation, and draw parallels with the phenomenon of supernumerary phantom limb.”
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Photo: flickr/twosistersknitting
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April 11 2012
NCBI ROFL: Viewing death on television increases the appeal of advertised products.
“References to death abound in many television programs accessible to most people. Terror Management Theory postulates that existential anxiety, which death reminders activate, may reinforce materialistic tendencies. The current article explores the effect of a death reminder in television shows on the desirability of advertised products. Consistent with Terror Management Theory’s predictions, in two studies participants show greater desire for products, which were advertised immediately following clips from programs that featured a death scene, compared with programs that did not. Cognitive accessibility of death predicted the appeal difference while changes in affect or interest in the show did not. The findings are discussed in light on affective and existential theories which make opposite predictions. Implications and future directions are considered.”
Photo: flickr/Editor B
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April 03 2012
NCBI ROFL: On Machiavellianism and car salesmen.
Machiavellianism scores and self-rated performance of automobile salespersons.
“Machiavellianism (Mach-B) was positively correlated with self-reported number of vehicles sold and income in two samples of 80 car salespersons. The Mach-B scale showed higher internal consistency and significant relationship with sales performance. The Mach IV scale, used for one of two samples, showed low internal consistency and a nonsignificant relationship with performance. The results provided partial support for earlier findings. Research designed to clarify this finding is required.”
Photo: flickr/ralphpaglia
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March 30 2012
NCBI ROFL: Factors affecting college students’ perceptions of sexual relationships between high school students and teachers.
“This study explored the effects of respondent gender, gender combination (male teacher/female student versus female teacher/male student), and teacher age (24 versus 39-years-old) on the perception of a sexual relationship between a teacher and a 16-year-old student. Participants were 80 male and 80 female undergraduates. A MANOVA yielded significant main effects for respondent gender and gender combination. Subsequent ANOVAs indicated that men generally viewed the experience more positively and that the male teacher/female student combination was viewed more negatively than the female teacher/male student pairing.”
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March 29 2012
NCBI ROFL: Gelotophobia: more common than you might think.
Gelotophobia in Israel: on the assessment of the fear of being laughed at.
“Gelotophobia is defined as the fear of being laughed at. Empirical studies revealed that it is a valid and useful concept which deserves further attention. Furthermore, gelotophobia is of relevance among nonclinical groups, and it should be best conceptualized as an individual differences phenomenon that ranges on a dimension from low to high fear of being laughed at. The present study presents the first empirical data on the fear of being laughed at in Israel (N = 220). It describes the adaptation of an instrument for the subjective assessment of gelotophobia to Hebrew. The translation yielded good psychometric properties in terms of high reliability . The Hebrew-GELOPH is best described with a one-dimensional factor solution. Items referring especially to the avoidance of places where one has made an embarrassing impression yielded higher endorsements. Gelotophobia was more prevalent among younger participants, females, and participants who were not in a relationship. Approximately 6% exceeded a cut-off score indicating at least a slight expression of gelotophobic symptoms. Results are discussed with respect to further application of the questionnaire in research and ...
March 26 2012
NCBI ROFL: Territorial defense in parking lots: retaliation against waiting drivers.
“Three studies showed that drivers leaving a public parking space are territorial even when such behavior is contrary to their goal of leaving. In Study 1 (observations of 200 departing cars), intruded-upon drivers took longer to leave than nonintruded-upon drivers. In Study 2, an experiment involving 240 drivers in which level of intrusion and status of intruder were manipulated, drivers took longer to leave when another car was present and when the intruder honked. Males left significantly sooner when intruded upon by a higher rather than lower status car, whereas females’ departure times did not differ as a function of the status of the car. There was evidence that distraction might explain some of this effect. In Study 3, individuals who had parked at a mall were asked about how they would react to intruders. Compared to what they believed other people would do, respondents said they would leave faster if the car were just waiting for them to leave but they would take longer to leave if the driver in the car honked at them.”
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March 22 2012
NCBI ROFL: Scientific study exposes lying on online dating profiles.
Separating fact from fiction: an examination of deceptive self-presentation in online dating profiles.
“This study examines self-presentation in online dating profiles using a novel cross-validation technique for establishing accuracy. Eighty online daters rated the accuracy of their online self-presentation. Information about participants’ physical attributes was then collected (height, weight, and age) and compared with their online profile, revealing that deviations tended to be ubiquitous but small in magnitude. Men lied more about their height, and women lied more about their weight, with participants farther from the mean lying more. Participants’ self-ratings of accuracy were significantly correlated with observed accuracy, suggesting that inaccuracies were intentional rather than self-deceptive. Overall, participants reported being the least accurate about their photographs and the most accurate about their relationship information. Deception patterns suggest that participants strategically balanced the deceptive opportunities presented by online self-presentation (e.g., the editability of profiles) with the social constraints of establishing romantic relationships (e.g., the anticipation of future interaction).”
Photo: flickr/Cali4beach
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March 16 2012
NCBI ROFL: Nifty ways to leave your lover: The tactics people use to entice and disguise the process of human mate poaching.
“Although a number of studies have explored the ways that men and women romantically attract mates, almost no research exists on the special tactics people use when already in a relationship and trying to attract someone new–a process known as mate poaching enticement. In Study 1, the authors investigated the tactics people use to entice others into making mate poaching attempts. Enticement tactic effectiveness conformed to evolutionary-predicted patterns across sex and temporal context. In Study 2, the authors examined the tactics men and women use to disguise mate poaching enticement. The most effective camouflage for poaching also varied between sex in evolutionary-predicted ways, regardless of the target of deception (i.e., current partner vs. larger community). Discussion focuses on limitations of this research, future investigative directions, unexpected findings, and the utility of placing mate poaching attraction within the broader context of human sexual strategies.”
Bonus table from the full text:
Photo: flickr/denharsh
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March 14 2012
Would People Rather Smack a Baby or Watch a Baby Get Smacked? (With Pictures!)
Truly one of the strangest figures we’ve ever seen in a paper.
Good news, kids: turns out we humans feel pretty awful about harming other people. That much you’d expect. But there’s a question about exactly what this feeling is: is it more that we feel the victim’s pain, or that we feel especially bad for causing the pain?
Psychologists put this question to the test in a paper called “Simulating murder,” which does, among other things, exactly what the title suggests. They made participants perform a slew of fake violent acts, such as pointing gun at someone’s face or smacking a baby against a desk, and asked partipants to either perform them or watch them being performed. If the victim’s pain was what matters, participants would presumably react the same in both situations.
Instead, participants had higher blood pressure and more constricted blood vessels—indicators of higher stress–when they were the guilty party. The subjects also performed similar but not objectionable physical tasks, like smacking a broom instead of a baby, to make sure simple physical exertion didn’t account for the difference.
Don’t worry, no babies were harmed in this study, though some baby dolls were. From ...
March 13 2012
NCBI ROFL: An analysis of uptight preschoolers.
Type A behavior in preschool children.
“Type A behaviors were observed in a group of 48 preschool children in different free-play and competitive situations. Interrater reliability was assessed on the Matthews Youth Test for Health (MYTH), and the children’s and their parents’ type A scores were compared. Scores on the MYTH were used to classify children as either type A or type B. Comparisons were made between type A and type B children’s play in classroom and in laboratory situations. For the laboratory situations, 24 same-sex type A-type B dyads were formed, and the dyads were observed in free play, followed by car racing, by a tower-building contest, and by an interview. Type A children more frequently showed annoyed facial expressions, gross motor activity, interruptions during classroom free play, and gross motor activity and aggressive play with an inflatable Bobo doll during the laboratory free-play situation. Type A children more often won the car race and the tower-building contest, and they answered a greater number of questions and more frequently answered first during the interviews. These data are consistent with other findings on type A behavior in preschool children and suggest that the ...
March 12 2012
NCBI ROFL: Want your friend to think you’re hot? Ride a roller coaster together.
Love at first fright: partner salience moderates roller-coaster-induced excitation transfer.
“This study examined the effects of residual nervous system arousal on perceptions of sexual attraction. Researchers approached individuals (males, n = 165; females, n = 135) at amusement parks as they were either waiting to begin or as they had just gotten off a roller-coaster ride. Participants were shown a photograph of an average attractive, opposite-gendered individual and asked to rate the individual on attractiveness and dating desirability. Participants were also asked to rate their seatmates’ levels of attractiveness. Consistent with the predictions of excitation transfer theory, for males and females riding with a nonromantic partner, ratings of attractiveness and dating desirability toward the photographed individual were higher among persons exiting than entering the ride. Among persons riding with a romantic partner, there were no significant differences in attractiveness or dating desirability ratings between persons entering and exiting the ride. The findings are discussed in terms of the potential moderator effects of a salient romantic partner on excitation transfer.”
Photo: flickr/Flabber DeGasky
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March 07 2012
NCBI ROFL: The evolution of humor from male aggression.
“The response to seeing a man riding a unicycle was reported to be consistently related to the viewer’s sex and stage of physical development. To see if this observation was universal, observations of responses were collected from 23 male and 9 female unicyclists aged 15-69 years, with 2-40 years cycling experience across four continents. With two exceptions among men, the findings were the same as those originally reported: children showed interest and curiosity, young girls showed little interest, while adult women showed a kindly, concerned, praising response. By contrast, boys showed physical aggression, which became more verbal, merging in the later teens to the snide, aggressive, stereotyped humorous response shown by adult males, which became less frequent in elderly men. The universality of the response across different individuals, environments, and dates of observation suggests an endogenous mechanism, and the association with masculine development relates this to androgen. The theoretical consequences are discussed. It is concluded that humor develops from aggression in males and is evolutionarily related to sexual selection.”
Bonus quotes from the main text:
All of the 30 other ...
March 01 2012
Scientists Watch Cars at an Intersection, Make Grand Claims About Greed
The intersection in question.
For two Fridays in June 2011, from 3 to 6 pm, two experimenters sat near an intersection in San Francisco and watched the cars. They arranged themselves so that drivers couldn’t see them, and every now and then, they recorded the make and physical appearance of a car and tried to guess the gender and age of the driver. As their chosen cars pulled up to the intersection, they kept track of which ones cut off others. Later, in another study, they positioned an experimenter at a crosswalk. They took note of which cars neglected to stop for the pedestrian.
No, this is not performance art—it’s science!
These studies, and five others that had people variously taking candy from children and pretending to be unscrupulous bosses, were recently published as a paper, in which the researchers claim they collectively show a connection between higher socio-economic class and greed.
The cars perceived as high-status turned out to have been the most frequent cutter-offers. The “upper-class” subjects reported that they took more candy. The subjects with higher socioeconomic class more frequently chose not to tell a job candidate that the job would soon be eliminated and ...
February 29 2012
NCBI ROFL: It was as big as my head, I swear! Biased spider size estimation in spider phobia.
“The current study tested the association between fear and perception in spider phobic individuals (n=57) within the context of a treatment outcome study. Participants completed 5 post-treatment Behavioral Approach Tasks (BATs) in which they encountered a live spider and were asked to provide spider size estimates. Consistent with predictions, results indicated that high levels of fear were associated with magnified perception of phobic stimuli. Specifically, we found a significant positive correlation between size estimates and self-reported fear while encountering spiders. Together with previous findings, these results further support the notion that fear is involved in the encoding and processing of perceptual information.”
Thanks to @NatRevMicro for today’s ROFL!
Photo: flickr/pamlau
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February 14 2012
The Formula for Love, Plus the Best of V-Day Science
Hey, Internet. It’s science here wishing you a happy Valentine’s Day. And we do mean happy—we wouldn’t be here if there weren’t any oxygen in the air right?
Let’s start with a pretty picture. Copy all of the below mathematical function and enter it into Google. Just do it.
sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01,
sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.5
…and links to the best V-Day science out there:
You Can Die of “Broken Heart Syndrome”
That soap opera cliche of someone clutching their chest and kneeling over dead after finding out a dead lover has some science behind it. Sudden shocks—even positive ones like winning the lottery—can cause a massive release of adrenaline, causing the heart to freeze up. The hearts of patients who die from this take on a distinctive shape resembling a Japanese octopus trap, which is where the name takotsubo cardiomyopathy comes from.
Why We Celebrate Valentine’s Day: Naked Romans
Every year on Valentine’s Day, writers dig up the origin of the holiday to talk about naked Romans. Sorry, we’re not immune to it either. Those pagan Romans used to run around naked with whips, hitting young women to increase their fertility. (Seriously? Dinner plans ...
February 03 2012
NCBI ROFL: The science of Facebook relationship status: It’s complicated.
It’s Facebook week on NCBI ROFL! All this week we’ll be featuring papers about everyone’s favorite social networking site. Enjoy!
“Are We Facebook Official?” Implications of Dating Partners’ Facebook Use and Profiles for Intimate Relationship Satisfaction.
“Extending previous research on positive and negative correlates of Facebook use for individuals’ outcomes, this study examined male and female dating partners’ (n=58 couples) Facebook use and portrayals of their intimate relationship on the Facebook profile. Confirming hypotheses from compatibility theories of mate selection, partners demonstrated similar Facebook intensity (e.g., usage, connection to Facebook), and were highly likely to portray their relationship on their Facebook profiles in similar ways (i.e., display partnered status and show their partner in profile picture). These Facebook profile choices played a role in the overall functioning of the relationship, with males’ indications of a partnered status linked with higher levels of their own and their partners’ (marginal) relationship satisfaction, and females’ displays of their partner in their profile picture linked with higher levels of their own and their partners’ relationship satisfaction. Finally, male and female reports of having had disagreements over the Facebook relationship status was associated with lower level of females’ but not males’ relationship satisfaction, ...
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