About
If you've got a story, picture, or link that's beyond belief, send it to tipline@haveigotoneforyou.com with your name and where you heard about it and we'll add it!
Accounts
Click here to check if anything new just came in.
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 ...
January 09 2012
Why We Love the Crap We Make, or The Grand Unifying Theory of Regretsy
Handmade! And priceless!
Your grandma’s day-glo knitted sweaters are proof: People love the stuff they make, even when what they make is a disaster. It’s a weird little corner of human psychology studied by behavioral economist Michael Norton, who dubs it the IKEA phenomenon, having observed in his own studies that people love the IKEA boxes they assembled themselves more than the identical IKEA boxes assembled by some other dude, and that people consider their wretched origami animals valuable works of art while others call them “nearly worthless crumpled paper.” He speculates that it may be the pride of accomplishment that makes people behave this way, or some warped sense that anything that took more work to make is inherently better.
But anyone who’s wasted a perfectly good Saturday working on a BEKVÄM can tell you that it ain’t love or pride that keeps you from throwing that thing out the window—it’s the fear of having to do it all over again. No, forget IKEA: a better name for this quirk of the mind is the Regretsy phenomenon. Etsy is an online marketplace for people selling handmade objects; Regretsy is ...
December 09 2011
Chocolate Science #539: Taking a Walk Makes You Eat Less Chocolate
It should come as no surprise that scientists have spent many hours contemplating new tortures for the chocolate-addicted. After all, how else will science know how much, say, boredom, will affect chocolate intake? Or stress? Or watching a psychologist unwrap a chocolate bar? These are the important things, people.
The latest edition of this research addresses a question close to many a cubicle drone’s heart: will exercise reduce the amount of chocolate you eat while at work? Even brief exercise gives the same kind of mood boost that chocolate consumption does, and researchers were interested in seeing whether 15 minutes’ walk would change how much chocolate people working on a computer ate from a nearby bowl. They had 78 people who were confirmed chocolate cravers abstain from chocolate for 2 days (that’s the torturous part), then brought them into the lab to either sit quietly for 15 minutes or walk briskly on a treadmill. They then took them to a desk, casually said that the subjects could help themselves to the chocolates, and had them complete tasks of various levels of difficulty.
This is the part where you lean in a little closer, because it turned out that ...
August 19 2011
What Are We Saying When We Say “Cheese”?
Is this dog really smiling?
We beam when we’re cheerful, grin sheepishly when we’re guilty, smirk when we’re proud. It all seems so simple and obvious, but what do we really know about smiling?
In a new book called Lip Service: Smiles in Life, Death, Trust, Lies, Work, Memory, Sex, and Politics, Yale University experimental psychologist Marianne LaFrance investigates the subtleties of smiling, showing how the familiar expression reveals more than we realize. Wired has an amusing Q&A with the doctor herself:
Wired.com: Why can smiles mean such different things in different cultures?
LaFrance: We acquire ways of knowing who is us and who is them. There have been fascinating studies where Australians and Americans were shown a bunch of face shots of other Australians and Americans. Their task was to identify which nationality, Australian or American, the person was. Shown neutral expressions, accuracy was no better than chance. But shown smiles, they were very good at guessing a person’s nationality. Subtle difference in a person’s smile are detectable, even if we can’t describe why.
Now there are also vast cross-cultural differences in the rules for smiling. Who is it OK to smile at, who not? ...
June 08 2011
Lots of Debt Makes Young People Feel Like They’re in Control
Money can’t buy happiness—but debt might just be able to rent you self-esteem, a new study suggests.
Being in the red seems to boost the self-confidence of people in their early-to-mid twenties, the researchers found. Using all sorts of data—financial, psychological, educational, you name it—collected every two years from 3,000 young adults as part of an enormous national survey, they were able to pick out this pattern: The more credit card debt and college loans young adults had, the higher their self-esteem and the more they felt in control of their lives.
Even when the researchers took starting self-confidence into account—young people with higher self-esteem might be more willing to take out loans in the first place, for instance—the pattern remained. It’s not clear cause and effect, since the researchers couldn’t make some of the kids go into debt and the others say solvent, but it does suggest that being in debt may actually improve self-esteem.
Um, what? Are these people’s bills somehow way more fun than ours?
Part of the effect is due to the fact that debt, especially school loans, are an investment the future, the researchers hypothesize. You’ve got to spend money ...
May 05 2011
Scientists Describe Five Phases of Quarter-Life Crisis, Recommend the Experience
Are you in a rut? Is it time to take life into your own hands? Are you ready take a time out to find yourself, and start over?
Are you 25?
It may be your quarter-life crisis knocking, say psychologists studying the phenomenon of 25–35-year-olds having a come-to-Jesus about where they’re going in life after having barely left the starting gates. Given the ambitious list of life to-dos many not-yet-disillusioned people give themselves (build killer start-up, and nab the corner office, and travel the world, and have kids, and be faithful to childhood dreams), it’s probably not too surprising that the phenomenon seems to be widespread among a certain class of people. Let’s come right out and say that like affluenza, this is not likely to be a problem outside the wealthier parts of the world.
In a study presented at the British Psychological Society meeting this week, researchers distilled the five key phases of the quarter-life crisis (via New Scientist) from a survey of 50 volunteers who’d had them:
Phase 1 – A feeling of being trapped by your life choices. Feeling as though you are living your life on autopilot.
Phase 2 – A rising ...
April 08 2011
If the Catastrophic Weather Events Don’t Get Us, the Stupidity Might
What global warming?
What the weather’s like affects some people’s beliefs about global climate change, a new study found: On hot days, they’re all over it, but on cold days, they’re not so sure.
This is not impressive, people. It’s called “global,” meaning not just what you personally felt when you walked out the door this morning. “Climate” also means something different from “weather”, and “change” could mean things will get warmer, colder, or just plain different. On unusually chilly days, these climatically labile folks are 0 for 3.
If only that was the worst of it. A string of studies have shown that people are comically bad at consistently thinking, well, anything when it comes to climate change. Even miniscule differences in what we’re up to at the moment or how we’re asked can have a big effect on what people think of climate change and what they’re willing to do to help. Here are five more ridiculously simple things that get people to change their minds:
What’s on TV. I’m sure you all remember the 2004 hit film The Day After Tomorrow, in which global warming throws Earth into a new ...
November 11 2010
Prescription for an Aggressive Man: Look at More Meat
Even the sight of the reddest, rawest steak won’t get your blood boiling. Surprising new research has found that staring at pictures of meat actually makes people less aggressive.
The insight comes from McGill University undergraduate Frank Kachanoff. He wondered if the sight of food would incite men’s defensive desires, much like a dog aggressively protecting its food bowl, he explained in a press release:
“I was inspired by research on priming and aggression, that has shown that just looking at an object which is learned to be associated with aggression, such as a gun, can make someone more likely to behave aggressively. I wanted to know if we might respond aggressively to certain stimuli in our environment not because of learned associations, but because of an innate predisposition. I wanted to know if just looking at the meat would suffice to provoke an aggressive behavior.”
To determine aggression, the experimenters put a man in a room and give him the ability to punish a person who was sorting photograghs. In one iteration of the test the pictures showed neutral objects, and in the other they showed cooked meat dishes. The amount of painful sound the participant decided to inflict on a bad picture sorter for his mistakes was used as a guide to the level of aggression the participant was feeling.
Kachanoff presented his work at an undergraduate research symposium at McGill. He found that the men who watched the sorter work with pictures of meat inflicted less painful punishment than the men watching the neutral pictures, which makes some sense in hindsight, Kachanoff explained in a press release:
“We used imagery of meat that was ready to eat. In terms of behaviour, with the benefit of hindsight, it would make sense that our ancestors would be calm, as they would be surrounded by friends and family at meal time,” Kachanoff explained. “I would like to run this experiment again, using hunting images. Perhaps Thanksgiving next year will be a great opportunity for a do-over!”
With all such evolutionary explanations for modern behavior, this should probably be taken with a few grains of salt (just like a tasty steak should be). But it would be interesting to see if this phenomenon would carry over into any other food images, and if meat had the same effect on females.
Related Content:
Discoblog: How to Cook Steak in Your Beer Cooler
Discoblog: National Pork Board to Unicorn Meat Purveyor: Lay Off Our Slogan
80beats: Red Meat Acts as Trojan Horse for Toxic Attack by E. Coli
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Saucy study reveals a gene that affects aggression after provocation
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Human ancestors carved meat with stone tools almost a million years earlier than expected
Image: Flickr/soyculto
July 19 2010
Danger! Car Salesmen Now in Possession of “Perfect Handshake” Equation
To seal more car deals, Chevrolet UK looked to arm its salesmen with the perfect weapon of confidence: an unstoppable handshake. Here’s the secret they received from Geoffrey Beattie, Head of Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester:
PH (Perfect Handshake)= √ (e^2 + ve^2)(d^2) + (cg + dr)^2 + π{(4<s>^2)(4<p>^2)}^2 + (vi + t + te)^2 + {(4<c>^2 )(4<du>^2)}^2
We hope (and suspect) the training posters and equation, supposedly meant for Chevrolet-sellers, are meant for publicity and are not a real attempt to improve customer relations.
The variables, as outlined in a Chevrolet press release:
(e) is eye contact (1=none; 5=direct) 5; (ve) is verbal greeting (1=totally inappropriate; 5=totally appropriate) 5; (d) is Duchenne smile – smiling in eyes and mouth, plus symmetry on both sides of face, and slower offset (1=totally non-Duchenne smile (false smile); 5=totally Duchenne) 5; (cg) completeness of grip (1=very incomplete; 5=full) 5; (dr) is dryness of hand (1=damp; 5=dry) 4; (s) is strength (1= weak; 5=strong) 3; (p) is position of hand (1=back towards own body; 5=other person’s bodily zone) 3; (vi) is vigour (1=too low/too high; 5=mid) 3; (t) is temperature of hands (1=too cold/too hot; 5=mid) 3; (te) is texture of hands (5=mid; 1=too rough/too smooth) 3; (c) is control (1=low; 5=high) 3; (du) is duration (1= brief; 5=long) 3.
The press release details some pretty common sense advice: avoid sweaty palms; don’t squeeze too hard or hold on too long; make eye contact. But putting the formula into action might be tough; if actually meant to inspire confidence (which the release says 70 percent of hand-shakers are lacking), doing the math before every hand-to-hand may instead lead to more perfect head scratching.
Related content:
Discoblog: Alien Math Shows Why Grad Student Doesn’t Have a Girlfriend
Discoblog: How to Make People Believe in ESP: Tell Them Scientists Think It’s Bogus
Discoblog: New Study: If a Dude Sounds Strong, He Probably Is
Discoblog: Can a Brain Scan Predict Your Behavior Better Than You Can?
80beats: Want Someone to Take a Decision Seriously? Hand Them Something Heavy
Image: flickr / Aidan Jones
July 06 2010
Psychology’s New Phobia-Fighting Tool: An Augmented Reality Cockroach
Looking for a midnight snack, you open a Tupperware container. Inside you find not your dinner leftovers, but a nasty cockroach. You stick your hand in.
Welcome to augmented reality psychology. The cockroach in the Tupperware is only in your mind–or your virtual reality goggles–and is part of an exposure therapy technique meant to treat those with extreme phobias.
Though traditional exposure therapy might require a person afraid of elevators to ride one repeatedly, or demand that a person afraid of cockroaches meet one face to bug-eyed face, the mere prospect of such experiences is enough to drive some patients out of therapy.
But perhaps, as described in a small study in Behavior Therapy, an augmented reality cockroach can provide all of the benefits without the ick.
Technology Review blogger Christopher Mims describes the setup, in which virtual cockroaches are inserted into video images of the real world.
“Combined with a camera on the front of the headset, the system allows researchers to show wearers both the real world and realistic cockroaches. The paper reports that the roaches could skitter, wave their antenna, and even change size from small and medium to hideously large.”
In the study, six women underwent a three-hour exposure session with the faux roaches. The hand in the Tupperware scene was a final test, which the study participants passed. Follow up tests over the next year showed that they continued to stay strong against virtual creepy crawlers.
Commenters on the Tech Review blog are already calling for non therapeutic uses, i.e. video-gaming: Duck Hunt meet bug squash.
Related content:
Discoblog: Let Them Eat Dirt! It Contains Essential Worms
Discoblog: Small Comfort: Cockroaches, Too, Get Fat on an Unbalanced Diet
Discoblog: Your Augmented Reality Life: Coming Soon in 2020
Discoblog: Augmented Reality Tattoos Are Visible Only to a Special Camera
Image: flickr / Steve Snodgrass
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
