-
The Hazy Science of Hot Weather and Violence
Wired News: The link between violence and hot weather is so intuitive that it’s embedded in our language: Hotheads lose tempers that flare, anger simmers and comes to a boil, and eventually we cool down. So what does science have to say? Do tempers truly soar with temperature? The answer, appropriately enough for these triple-digit days, is hazy and hotly contested. To be sure, extensive literature exists on hot weather and violence, stretching from poorly controlled regional studies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — oh, those hot-blooded southerners! — to more sophisticated modern analyses.
-
Polling the Stars and Stripes
The Wall Street Journal: Showing American voters an image of the American flag while asking whom they plan to vote for shifts them toward the Republican Party, a new study finds—and the effects of that exposure are still evident eight months later. Researchers recruited some 200 potential voters in fall 2008, about a month before the presidential election, through social-networking sites. Participants were queried two times before the election; again a few days after the election; and yet again in July 2009. Read more: The Wall Street Journal
-
The Saddest Movie in the World
Smithsonian.com: In 1979, director Franco Zeffirelli remade a 1931 Oscar-winning film called The Champ, about a washed-up boxer trying to mount a comeback in the ring. Zeffirelli’s version got tepid reviews. The Rotten Tomatoes website gives it only a 38 percent approval rating. But The Champ did succeed in launching the acting career of 9-year-old Ricky Schroder, who was cast as the son of the boxer. At the movie’s climax, the boxer, played by Jon Voight, dies in front of his young son. “Champ, wake up!” sobs an inconsolable T.J., played by Schroder. The performance would win him a Golden Globe Award. Read more: Smithsonian.com
-
Rose-colored glasses may help love last
Los Angeles Times: If Cupid wanted to improve his game with science, he'd shoot first, then hand out rose-colored glasses with instructions attached: To be worn when viewing your relationship and your partner's personality or body. For best results, keep using well after "I do." Remove carefully at your own risk. Psychologists have long known that new love can be blind and new lovers delusional. Research has shown that newlyweds exaggerate their partner's good qualities, forget the bad ones, rate their own relationship with annoying superiority and so on. But newer research tantalizingly suggests that this myopia is good for more than driving your single friends crazy.
-
Heat Wave Psychology
Much of the eastern U.S. is gripped in a heat wave right now, with some predictable effects on mood and behavior—or at least our perceptions of others’ moods and behavior. Normally congenial folks seem to be simmering, while others are on a slow burn. Hotter heads are steaming, and a few have even been pushed to the boiling point. What is it with all these heat metaphors? The fact is our metaphorical thermometer is as much a gauge of our social interactions as an actual thermometer is of degrees Fahrenheit. At least that’s an emerging theory, which psychologists have been exploring in various ways in the laboratory. Here’s an example, from Hans IJzerman and Gun Semin of Utrecht University.
-
Does the guy with the Porsche really get the most dates?
Orlando Sentinel: Everyone assumes the racier the car, the racier the hormones. Now, researchers at the University of Minnesota have brought scientific precision to that age-old observation. To wit: Sexual signaling really works -- but not necessarily the way a young man intends when he buys the biggest TV or the flashiest car. "Men and women both know that that's the guy who wants casual sex," said Vladas Griskevicius, assistant marketing professor at the university. "But he isn't more desirable as a marriage partner. That's not the guy you want to marry." Read more: Orlando Sentinel
