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Why Jane Austen would approve of online dating
USA Today: David Merkur is suddenly the poster boy for everything that's wrong with the crass world of online dating. Merkur, a New York investment banker, created a spreadsheet to keep track of the women he was dating, most of whom he had met on Match.com. Then he e-mailed it to one of his dates, who forwarded it on to her friends, and it went viral. Naturally, some of the 11 other women Merkur dated — and rated, and tabulated — are angry. When singles who have found matches by computer algorithm start using Excel to keep track of their relationships, perhaps it's time to take a critical look at online dating. Have we allowed the tools of the market to intrude where they don't belong?
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Jonathan Haidt on the Colbert Report
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt presents his book "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion" on The Colbert Report Watch here: Colbert Report
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Let Us Eat Cake: The Paradox of Scarcity
Everyone knows by now that the U.S. is in the midst of an obesity epidemic, but for all the hand-wringing, nobody really knows why. Experts have offered many theories about why Americans eat too much—and especially too much fattening food—but these remain theories. It’s because Americans are ill-informed about diet and nutrition. We simply do not understand that double cheeseburgers are loaded with fat and calories. Or it’s because we’re constantly bombarded with stimulating ads for tempting but unhealthy snacks. Or we simply lack the self-discipline of earlier generations. Or all of the above. Or perhaps something else entirely.
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5 Mind-Bending Facts About Dreams
LiveScience: When your head hits the pillow, for many it's lights out for the conscious part of you. But the cells firing in your brain are very much awake, sparking enough energy to produce the sometimes vivid and sometimes downright haunted dreams that take place during the rapid-eye-movement stage of your sleep. Why do some people have nightmares while others really spend their nights in bliss? Like sleep, dreams are mysterious phenomena. But as scientists are able to probe deeper into our minds, they are finding some of those answers. Here's some of what we know about what goes on in dreamland. Read the whole story: LiveScience
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A Psychological Twist in Getting Something for Nothing
The Wall Street Journal: When consumers are offered something for nothing, they generally want to pay anyway. That’s according to a new study and a handful of businesses that say “pay-what-you-want” options for products often drive customers to pay a full price or just skip buying. Why would people act against their own economic interest? To protect self image, researchers say. Consumers “feel bad when they pay less than the ‘appropriate’ price, causing them to pass on the opportunity to purchase the product altogether,” says the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Rapid Thinkers Take Greater Risks
The Atlantic: Pop quiz: do you consider yourself a fast thinker or a slow thinker? Time's up! If you took less than a second to answer that, you might be more of a risk-taker. That's according to new research (via Psychology Today) from a team of Princeton scientists who thought there might be a causal relationship between the speed of a person's thought and their willingness to embrace dangerous behavior, such as illegal drug use and unprotected sex. The researchers, Emily Pronin and Jesse Chandler, ran two tests in a study that appeared this month in Psychological Science. Participants were divided into two groups.
