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When Properties Seem Priced to Spur a Bidding War
The New York Times: Despite the housing market slump, homes in some areas of the country are still selling above listing prices. In the Noe Valley area of San Francisco, where I live, for instance, a number of homes that seemed to be priced low ended up receiving multiple bids and selling for thousands of dollars over the asking price. Academic papers on the topic of negotiation help explain why this phenomenon occurs and why those in the market for a home may want to stay away from properties offered at below-market prices, where multiple bids are being accepted. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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Chicken Soup For the Soul: Comfort Food Fights Loneliness
U.S. News & World Report: Mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, meatloaf…they may be bad for your arteries, but according to an upcoming study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, they’re good for your heart and emotions. The study focuses on “comfort food” and how it makes people feel. “For me personally, food has always played a big role in my family,” says Jordan Troisi, a graduate student at the University of Buffalo, and lead author on the study. The study came out of the research program of his co-author Shira Gabriel, which has looked at social surrogates—non-human things that make people feel like they belong.
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When Do You Owe an Apology? Depends on Gender
Both men and women may be pulling pranks this April fool’s but you can bet more women than men will be apologizing after. A study published in Psychological Science found that men apologize less frequently than women because they have a higher threshold for what they find as offensive behavior. In the first study, volunteers were asked to keep daily diaries of all offenses committed and whether an apology was given. Women reported offering more apologies than men but they also reported committing more offenses. A second study tested whether this was because men may have a higher threshold for what is considered offensive by having volunteers rate imaginary and recalled offenses.
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How Sports May Focus the Brain
The New York Times: Who can cross a busy road better, a varsity wrestler or a psychology major? That question, which seems to beg for a punch line, actually provided the motivation for an unusual and rather beguiling new experiment in which student athletes were pitted against regular collegians in a test of traffic-dodging skill. The results were revelatory. For the study,published last week in The Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recruited 36 male and female students, ages 18 to 22.
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Does Belief in Free Will Lead to Action?
Free will may be an illusion. Yet we persist in believing we are the masters of our fates—and that belief affects how we act. Think you determine the course of your life and you’re likely to work harder toward your goals and feel better about yourself too. Think you don’t, and you’re likelier to behave in ways that fulfill that prophesy. “Folk psychology tells us if you feel in control, you perform better,” says Davide Rigoni, an experimental psychologist now at the University of Marseille.
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How comfort foods beat the blues
The Telegraph: It works by reminding people of their childhood actually fight feelings of isolation by making people feel like they belong. Psychologists at the University of Buffalo in the US wanted to find out if food could have a similar effect on people as watching their favourite television show or looking at photographs and mementos of friends and family. In one experiment, researchers tried to make some participants feel lonely by having them write for six minutes about a fight with someone close to them. Others were given an emotionally neutral writing assignment. Read the whole story: The Telegraph