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Why We Like People Who Share Our Taste In Music
The Huffington Post: When you're at a party and you meet new people, you'd like to have some way to get to know about them quickly. You can try to talk about sports with people, but not everyone follows sports. You can try to talk about politics, but those conversations can get heated quickly. Instead, people often ask others about music. Finding out the music that someone else likes seems to give you a lot of information about them, quickly.
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Could stock market stress induce poorer financial decisions?
Los Angeles Times: The Dow Jones industrial average's wicked drops this week seem to have many investors turning to U.S. Treasury bonds and otherwise retreating into defensive economic positions to wait out the apparent financial meltdown. But the results from a recent study indicated that stress, perhaps in the form of an unstable stock market or high unemployment, might cause people to make even more risky financial decisions. A 2009 paper published in the journal Psychological Science showed how people's decision-making changed in response to acute stress.
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Picky Palates
The New York Times: Q. Why am I such a fussy eater? Does each person have a distinct set of taste buds, or is my fussiness just in my head? A. Differences in taste buds contribute a bit, but there are many other physical and psychological factors, including body weight, state of mind and disease, that make some people finicky, said David A. Levitsky, professor of nutrition and psychology at Cornell University. “We know that people vary rather remarkably in their ability to taste bitter,” he said, with some able to detect bitterness at very low concentrations.
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Groups Call for Scientists to Engage the Body Politic
The New York Times: When asked to name a scientist, Americans are stumped. In one recent survey, the top choice, at 47 percent, was Einstein, who has been dead since 1955, and the next, at 23 percent, was “I don’t know.” In another survey, only 4 percent of respondents could name a living scientist. While these may not have been statistically rigorous exercises, they do point to something real: In American public life, researchers are largely absent. Trained to stick to the purity of the laboratory, they tend to avoid the sometimes irrational hurly-burly of politics.
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Red pill or blue pill: Who cares? Getting to choose is the best part
Ottawa Citizen: Life is about making choices, from the mundane (Should I eat a Kit Kat for breakfast?) to the momentous (Should I accept this new job?). Though we agonize over some decisions, researchers have found that we generally like having choices. And after we choose something, we tend to like it more. However, a new study examining the experience of choice, suggests that it’s not just about the selections — it’s about the selecting. Simply having the possibility to choose is pleasurable.
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Economic Prosperities Influence Intimate Relationships: Study
French Tribune: According to a report of USA Today, a study reveals that an equal financial status leads to a healthy and happy sex life. Roy Baumeister, a Psychologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee the author of the study reveals that his writing is based on the findings of "sexual economics". The study published in the journal of Social Psychology, has observed data of 37 countries, which also comprised of the international survey on 3170 people. The results of the study revealed that the gender equality was at the highest position, followed by casual sex, more sex partner's per capita, younger ages for first sexual experience and greater tolerance of premarital sex.
