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Study: Pitchers more likely to ‘bean’ batters in hot weather
USA Today: Researchers analyzed data from more than 57,000 Major League baseball games from 1952 through 2009 and found that pitchers whose teammates were hit by a pitch were more likely to nail an opposing batter when the temperature reached 90 degrees F than on cooler days. If the temperatures were in the 50s during a game, there was a 22% chance a pitcher would hit a batter if a teammate had been hit by a pitch during the first inning. But the likelihood of such retribution increased to 27% if temperatures were in the 90s.
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To alter consumer behavior, some companies reach out to academics
The Washington Post: At Arlington-based Opower, success is measured by the amount of energy homeowners conserve. But the company’s software, which allows consumers to track their usage, cannot yield that result on its own. The homeowners themselves have to flip the switch. The company has sought to bridge that disconnect between product and intended result with the help of behavioral psychologists, whose research helps break down why people are motivated to make certain decisions. Read the whole story: The Washington Post
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Colorless Food? We Blanch
The New York Times: Without the artificial coloring FD&C Yellow No. 6, Cheetos Crunchy Cheese Flavored Snacks would look like the shriveled larvae of a large insect. Not surprisingly, in taste tests, people derived little pleasure from eating them. Their fingers did not turn orange. And their brains did not register much cheese flavor, even though the Cheetos tasted just as they did with food coloring. “People ranked the taste as bland and said that they weren’t much fun to eat,” said Brian Wansink, a professor at Cornell University and director of the university’s Food and Brand Lab. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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What really makes people laugh at jokes on April Fool’s Day?
Yahoo! News: There may be no better day all year to express humour than April Fool's Day, but what makes something funny? People of all ages and cultures experience humour every day. It affects how we select our friends and mates. It attracts attention and admiration, softens criticism, alleviates conflict and helps people cope with anxiety and physical pain. Professors Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren presented a study last August in the journal Psychological Science that shows what it takes to make something funny. Humour only occurs when three conditions are satisfied.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Hierarchical Encoding in Visual Working Memory: Ensemble Statistics Bias Memory for Individual Items Timothy F. Brady and George A. Alvarez Current models of visual working memory assume that people encode memories of objects individually. Yet, new research has shown that items surrounding an object can influence a person’s recollection of it. When observers were asked to recall the size of a single circle after viewing an image with multiple circles, they tended to report a larger size if the other circles were large and a smaller size if the surrounding circles were small.
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How to spot a fake smile: It’s all in the eyes
MSNBC: We all know that smiling faces sometimes tell lies, even without the Motown song there to remind us. But now there’s proof that those fake smiles may not be worth as much as the genuine article. In a study conducted at Bangor University in Wales, researchers had 36 undergrads play a game in which they won money from four opponents, each of whom would indicate the participants’ wins by displaying either a genuine or a polite smile. In a later phase of the game, participants chose which opponent they wanted to play.
