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Liberals Aren’t Like the Rest, or So They Think
Liberals tend to underestimate the amount of actual agreement among those who share their ideology, while conservatives tend to overestimate intra-group agreement, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. These findings may help to explain differences in how political groups and movements, like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, gain traction on the national stage: “The Tea Party movement developed a succinct set of goals in its incipient stages and effectively mobilized its members toward large-scale social change quite quickly,” says psychological scientist Chadly Stern of New York University.
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Work Up a Sweat, and Bargain Better
The New York Times: If better health isn’t enough incentive to take a brisk walk, perhaps there is another one: it may get you a better deal. New research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers a twist on the adage “never let them see you sweat,” says Jared Curhan, associate professor of organization studies at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, and one of the study’s co-authors. “If you’re sweating, and your heart rate is up, it’s seen as a sign something is going wrong, that you’re too nervous, off-balance, flustered,” he said.
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PG-13 movies match R rating for violence, study says
The Washington Post: The prevalence of gun violence in top PG-13 movies has more than tripled since the rating was introduced in the mid-1980s, and last year it eclipsed even the amount in R-rated movies, according to findings to be published Monday in the journal Pediatrics. “I think most parents would be surprised to learn that,” said Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University and one of the study’s authors. “We were pretty shocked.” ...
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What’s In A Name? That Next Promotion, For One Thing
Fast Company: Studies have shown that all sorts of ridiculous things correlate with people's relative power: if you're taller, more attractive, have a deeper voice, you'll be more likely be successful. And as a new study from Deutschland shows, your surname might be another factor. let's compare these German names: Kaiser (“emperor”) König (“king”) Fürst (“prince”) With these: Bergmann (“miner”), Schubert (“shoemaker”) Zimmerman (“carpenter”) What's the difference between the first group and the second? The first are noble-sounding (in the cases of princes, quite literally). Read the whole story: Fast Company
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Cheerleader Effect: Why People Are More Beautiful in Groups
The Atlantic: Who should I hang out with if I want to look the most attractive? And how many of said people must I acquire? The basic idea of research published this week in the journal Psychological Science is that our asymmetries and disproportionalities tend to "average out" amid a group of faces, and our weird little faces are perceived as slightly less weird. Drew Walker and Edward Vul of the University of California, San Diego, did five experiments wherein subjects rated the attractiveness of people in photographs. Some people were pictured alone, and others were in groups.
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Teens Who Drink Alone More Likely To Develop Alcohol Problems as Young Adults
Most teenagers who drink alcohol do so with their friends in social settings, but a new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh reveals that a significant number of adolescents consume alcohol while they are alone. The researchers found that, compared to their peers who drink only in social settings, teens who drink alone have more alcohol problems, are heavier drinkers, and are more likely to drink in response to negative emotions. Furthermore, solitary teenage drinkers are more likely to develop alcohol use disorders in early adulthood.
