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God Can Help Companies Turn Customers Into Daredevils
The New York Times: God is often portrayed as a benevolent father figure, or a protective force. But how about a different image of God: the marketing force? New research shows that when consumers are presented with the concept of the divine, even in an offhand manner or an ad on social media, it can prompt them to take risks they might otherwise not. Like trying a new product or experience, even one with a bit of danger. This finding, which adds a counterintuitive twist to existing research about God and risk-taking, comes from scholars at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and was published in the journal of the Association for Psychological Science in February.
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Men Strive To Give More To Charity When The Fundraiser Is Cute
NPR: We donate to charities for lots of reasons: because we're generally magnanimous people, because we care deeply about certain issues or because it's the only way to get Meg to stop talking about the plight of the endangered proboscis monkey. And for men, there may be another force at play: a subconscious desire to impress the ladies. Researchers in the United Kingdom reviewed thousands of online donation pages from the 2014 Virgin London Marathon. Runners participating in the marathon usually put up a fundraising page where they can raise money for a charity of their choice.
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Scary Smart
Slate: If you worry a lot, fear not—your anxiety just might be a sign of high intelligence. The idea has been around for a while: The adage that ignorance is bliss suggests the reverse, that knowledge involves anguish. Now it’s starting to get some scientific validation. ... The perception that worrywarts are smart is bolstered by a peculiar 2012 experiment by psychologists Tsachi Ein-Dor and Orgad Tal, from the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel. The experiment inflicted seemingly incidental bursts of stress on 80 students. The students in the study were told their role was to assess artwork presented by a software program—but this was just a cover story.
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Feeling the ‘Rocky’ in Relationships
The Huffington Post: In 2008, a massive earthquake shook the Chinese province of Sichuan. Measuring 8.0, the quake killed more than 69,000, injured countless more, and left 4.8 million homeless. The Chinese government has spent billions on the region's recovery, which even now is incomplete. The immediate devastation in Sichuan was also followed by a dramatic spike in the divorce rate, a phenomenon that captured international attention -- and sparked widespread speculation -- at the time. Did the deadly earthquake actually cause the jump in marital breakups? The spike might have been a coincidence, though that's unlikely.
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Tylenol Might Dull Emotional Pain, Too
NPR: A common pain medication might make you go from "so cute!" to "so what?" when you look at a photo of a kitten. And it might make you less sensitive to horrifying things, too. It's acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. Researchers say the drug might be taking the edge off emotions — not just pain. ... On average, the people who'd taken the acetaminophen said they felt nearly 20 percent less happy when they saw the delightful photos and nearly 10 percent less sad when they saw the dreadful photos compared to those who'd taken the placebo. The same was true for their ratings for the power of each image.
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Learn Self-Control, Stay Off the Dole
Pacific Standard: It’s an age-old debate: Are we the masters of our fate, capable of shaping our own destinies? Or are we at the mercy of our genetics and/or upbringing to such an extent that the trajectories of our lives are pretty much set early on? Newly published research provides evidence supporting the latter, bleaker perspective. An analysis of decades worth of data on two large, nationally representative groups of British citizens finds those who had problems with self-control as children had more trouble finding, and keeping, jobs as adults.
