Over the past 2 years I've done a considerable amount of research in the realms of behavioral, cognitive, and social, psychology, as well as product psychology and the psychology of music, and cognitive neuroscience. Many of the studies and research papers I've aggregated have profound business and consumer implications.

1. Final Presentation
Part 2

2. Sections
• Studies (3)
• Research Papers (209)
• Other (395)

3. Studies

4. A Message From Your Brain: I'm Not
Good At Remembering What I Hear
"Our auditory memory isn't as robust as we might like to think it is," says Poremba. "We think that we are great
at integrating all the senses," but the experiment shows that tactile and visual memory easily trumped auditory
memory.
The results further suggest that the brain processes tactile and visual memories through a similar mechanism,
but that auditory memory is processed differently. This has potential implications for understanding the
evolution of the human brain, says Bigelow, since the auditory memory of monkeys and chimpanzees also lags
behind their tactile and visual memory.

5. Shared brain activity predicts audience preferences
The researchers also used official television viewing figures and publicly available
data from Facebook and Twitter to gauge how popular each clip was at the time
it was first shown. As in earlier studies of shared brain activity, they found that
some of the clips produced a greater degree of synchronised brain activity in the
participants that others.
Remarkably, though, the participants’ shared brain activity accurately predicted
audience reactions to each at the time they were aired, with the most popular
scenes and commercials producing the greatest degree of brain synchronisation
in the participants.
Thus, the extent of shared brain activity within the small group of participants
was closely linked to the collective behaviour of a much larger group of people,
suggesting that brain scanning technology could eventually be used to predict
peoples’ reactions to a forthcoming film, their product preferences, or perhaps
even how they might vote in an upcoming election
New research published in the journal Nature Communications adding some hope to the neuromarketing hype, by
showing that the brain activity shared by small groups of people in response to film clips can accurately predict how
popular those clips will be among larger groups.
Ten years ago, Uri Hasson and his colleagues recruited five participants and used functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) to scan their brains while each one watched the same 30-minute clip of Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti western,
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. They noticed that the film produced remarkably similar patterns of brain activity in all
the participants, synchronising the activity across multiple regions, such that their brains “ticked collectively” while they
viewed it.
The researchers went on to show that films differ in their ability to induce this shared brain activity, with the more
engaging ones producing a greater degree of synchrony, and more recently others have shown that the stereoscopic
effects used in 3D films make viewing more enjoyable by creating a more immersive experience.

6. The Neuroscience Of Emoticons
Shaded areas indicate the activity areas in (1) right fusiform gyrus (2)
right inferior frontal gyrus (3) right middle frontal gyrus, and (4) right
inferior parietal lobule.
More recent work, led by Churches, conducted a similar test using a different scientific approach. With electrodes
hooked to their scalp, 20 test participants looked at pictures of actual faces and Western-style emoticons--with :-) for a
smile and :-( for a frown. They also looked at these same items in inverted form: an upside-down face, for instance, or
an emoticon like (-: facing the wrong way.
The reason for this setup requires some technical explanation. Rather than measuring brain images, Churches and
company measured electrical brain responses known as event-related potentials, or ERPs. The brain produces distinct
ERPs for various events. When it sees faces, for instance, a reliable negative ERP occurs 170 milliseconds later--known
as the N170. When it sees inverted faces, the amplitude of that N170 gets larger
In simple terms, the researchers wanted to know if emoticons, both normal and inverted, produce a similar N170
effect. Sure doesn't seem like it. While normal emoticons did produce a large N170 signal, inverted emoticons
produced a smaller one (below), the researchers report in a 2014 issue of Social Neuroscience. They suspect that
flipped emoticons lose their cohesive symbolic meaning--becoming just a loose collection of punctuation.

7. Online trolls are narcissists, sadists and
psychopaths, says study
In two online studies (total N = 1215), respondents completed personality inventories and a survey of their
Internet commenting styles. Overall, strong positive associations emerged among online commenting
frequency, trolling enjoyment, and troll identity, pointing to a common construct underlying the measures.
Both studies revealed similar patterns of relations between trolling and the Dark Tetrad of personality:
trolling correlated positively with sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, using both enjoyment
ratings and identity scores.
Of all personality measures, sadism showed the most robust associations with trolling and, importantly,
the relationship was specific to trolling behavior. Enjoyment of other online activities, such as chatting and
debating, was unrelated to sadism. Thus cyber-trolling appears to be an Internet manifestation of everyday
sadism

8. Product Psychology Explains How To Get Users Hooked
On Products Designed Around Habit And Context
Last year, tens of thousands of hackers signed up to receive Hack
Design, a newsletter teaching the principles of design so that those used
to focusing on how things work behind the scenes could start at a point
that also considers aesthetics and user-friendliness.
Today, a group of product-focused creators — “Hooked” author Nir Eyal,
Product Hunt‘s Ryan Hoover, and Greylock Partners‘s Josh Elman,
among others — are hoping to follow up on that newsletter’s success
with the launch of Product Psychology, a weekly course on the
psychology of user behavior.
Courses will arrive in the form of link-blog like posts delivered to your
email inbox. Each week, one curator from the 17 psychologists,
entrepreneurs, and designers involved in the project focuses on a single
topic they’re especially versed in, with posts ranging from “How Scarcity
& Impatience Drive User Behavior” to “Does Your Product Rely On
Intuition Or Deliberation?”
http://www.productpsychology.com/category/user-behavior/

9. How Multitasking Reshapes Your Brain
Into A Constantly Distracted State
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PriSFBu5CLs
People who frequently use several media devices at the
same time have lower grey-matter density in one particular
region of the brain compared to those who use just one
device occasionally
Media multitasking, or the concurrent consumption of multiple media forms, is increasingly prevalent in today’s society
and has been associated with negative psychosocial and cognitive impacts. Individuals who engage in heavier media-multitasking
are found to perform worse on cognitive control tasks and exhibit more socio-emotional difficulties. However,
the neural processes associated with media multi-tasking remain unexplored.
The present study investigated relationships between media multitasking activity and brain structure. Research has
demonstrated that brain structure can be altered upon prolonged exposure to novel environments and experience. Thus,
we expected differential engagements in media multitasking to correlate with brain structure variability.
This was confirmed via Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM) analyses: Individuals with higher Media Multitasking Index (MMI)
scores had smaller gray matter density in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Functional connectivity between this ACC
region and the precuneus was negatively associated with MMI. Our findings suggest a possible structural correlate for the
observed decreased cognitive control performance and socio-emotional regulation in heavy media-multitaskers.
While the cross-sectional nature of our study does not allow us to specify the direction of causality, our results brought to
light novel associations between individual media multitasking behaviors and ACC structure differences.

10. The Psychology of Your Future Self and How Your
Present Illusions Hinder Your Future Happiness
Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_you_are_always_changing
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_researches_happiness
“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as
temporary as all the people you’re ever been. The one constant in our lives is change.”
The things we do when we expect our lives to continue are naturally and properly different than the things we might do if we expected them to
end abruptly. We go easy on the lard and tobacco, smile dutifully at yet another of our supervisor’s witless jokes, read books like this one when
we could be wearing paper hats and eating pistachio macaroons in the bathtub, and we do each of these things in the charitable service of the
people we will soon become. We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days
constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy. Rather than indulging in whatever strikes our momentary fancy, we take
responsibility for the welfare of our future selves, squirreling away portions of our paychecks each month so they can enjoy their retirements on
a putting green, jogging and flossing with some regularity so they can avoid coronaries and gum grafts, enduring dirty diapers and mind-numbing
repetitions of The Cat in the Hat so that someday they will have fat-cheeked grandchildren to bounce on their laps. Even plunking down a dollar
at the convenience store is an act of charity intended to ensure that the person we are about to become will enjoy the Twinkie we are paying for
now. In fact, just about any time we want something — a promotion, a marriage, an automobile, a cheeseburger — we are expecting that if we
get it, then the person who has our fingerprints a second, minute, day, or decade from now will enjoy the world they inherit from us, honoring
our sacrifices as they reap the harvest of our shrewd investment decisions and dietary forbearance.
[But] our temporal progeny are often thankless. We toil and sweat to give them just what we think they will like, and they quit their jobs, grow
their hair, move to or from San Francisco, and wonder how we could ever have been stupid enough to think they’d like that. We fail to achieve
the accolades and rewards that we consider crucial to their well-being, and they end up thanking God that things didn’t work out according to
our shortsighted, misguided plan. Even that person who takes a bite of the Twinkie we purchased a few minutes earlier may make a sour face
and accuse us of having bought the wrong snack.

11. Curiosity improves memory by tapping
into the brain’s reward system
Ranganath said the findings are in line with
theories that give dopamine a key role in
stabilising or consolidating memories. The
research is published in the journal, Neuron.
Brain scans of college students have shed light on why people learn more effectively when their curiosity is piqued than
when they are bored stiff.
Researchers in the US found evidence that curiosity ramped up the activity of a brain chemical called dopamine, which in
turn seemed to strengthen people’s memories.
Students who took part in the study were better at remembering answers to trivia questions when they were curious, but
their memories also improved for unrelated information they were shown at the same time.
The findings suggest that while grades may have their place in motivating students, stimulating their natural curiosity
could help them even more.
“There are times when people feel they can take in a lot of new information, and other times when they feel their
memories are terrible,” said Ranganath. “This work suggests that once you light that fire of curiosity, you put the brain in
a state that’s more conducive to learning. Once you get this ramp-up of dopamine, the brain becomes more like a sponge
that’s ready to soak up whatever is happening.”

12. Your Decision-Making Processes Are a
Lot More Random Than You Realize
For the most part, we make decisions
based on our prior experiences. But what
about those situations that are completely
new or unpredictable?
A new study suggests that when facing an
excessively uncertain or challenging
scenario, the brain chooses randomness as
the best strategy.
When it comes to making decisions, our brains are extremely dependent on past experiences. In fact, some cognitive
scientists speculate that the brain has a built-in mechanism for assessing (or weighing) the efficacy of a decision based on
precedents from the past. It's also something we can be conscious of; to improve our rational decision making, it's
important that we use new information to change our confidence in a belief. But as a recent experiment conducted by
Alla Karpova of the Janelia Farm Research Campus shows, randomness may be the brain's preferred policy when things
get particularly challenging or when the situation is completely without precedent.
Karpova says the mechanism behind this change is found in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain structure involved
in using experience to make decisions. And in fact, when the researchers manipulated the activity of neurons that
released a stress hormone into the ACC, they were able to reverse the rats' behavioral strategies. When these neurons
were stimulated, the rats abandoned the experience-based strategy and started to behave randomly in situations when
this wasn't expected. Fascinatingly, inhibition of the stress hormone, norepinephrine, caused the rats to rely on their
experiences — even when faced with the challenging competitor.

13. Study finds that women who are
ovulating are more into kissing.
Hormonal changes associated with the human menstrual cycle have been previously found to
affect female mate preference, whereby women in the late follicular phase of their cycle (i.e.,
at higher risk of conception) prefer males displaying putative signals of underlying genetic
fitness. Past research also suggests that romantic kissing is utilized in human mating contexts
to assess potential mating partners.
The current study examined whether women in their late follicular cycle phase place greater
value on kissing at times when it might help serve mate assessment functions. Using an
international online questionnaire, results showed that women in the follicular phase of their
menstrual cycle felt that kissing was more important at initial stages of a relationship than
women in the luteal phase of their cycle. Furthermore, it was found that estimated
progesterone levels were a significant negative predictor for these ratings.

14. Researchers “Copy and Paste” Fear
From One Memory to Another
Now, researchers studying mice have discovered that memories
can be broken down into component parts — the emotional part
separated from the factual part — and that the emotions
associated with a memory can be transferred to a totally different
memory.
Redondo and his team expect that this growing body of research
may help us understand how unpleasant memories are formed in
the first place — and eventually, maybe even aid in the
development of clinical tools for making unpleasant memories
less painful.
MIT neuroscientist Roger Redondo and his team started by gathering a sample group of genetically engineered mice. The
mice’s brains were engineered so that, if an antibiotic known as doxycycline was removed from their diet, certain neurons in
their brains would express a protein called channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) which triggers neural activity in response to blue
light.
This system enabled the team to use doxycycline as a sort of “record/pause” button for neural activity in the animals’
brains. The investigators could remove the antibiotic from the mice’s diet, give the animals certain kinds of conditioning,
then start giving them doxycycline again; thus creating light-sensitive groups of neurons that had activated during specific
time periods and tasks
This research makes it pretty clear that memories aren’t all-or-nothing recollections. They can be broken down into
component pieces like locations and emotions; and each of those pieces can be reactivated independently, and even
become attached to completely different memory pieces than those with which it originally formed.

15. This Psych Discovery Explains Why You
Get Your Best Ideas In The Shower
When faced with a difficult decision, it is often suggested to "sleep on it" or take a break from thinking about the decision
in order to gain clarity.
But new brain imaging research from Carnegie Mellon University, published in the journal "Social Cognitive and Affective
Neuroscience," finds that the brain regions responsible for making decisions continue to be active even when the
conscious brain is distracted with a different task. The research provides some of the first evidence showing how the
brain unconsciously processes decision information in ways that lead to improved decision-making.
"This research begins to chip away at the mystery of our unconscious brains and decision-making," said J. David Creswell,
assistant professor of psychology in CMU's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and director of the Health
and Human Performance Laboratory. "It shows that brain regions important for decision-making remain active even while
our brains may be simultaneously engaged in unrelated tasks, such as thinking about a math problem. What’s most
intriguing about this finding is that participants did not have any awareness that their brains were still working on the
decision problem while they were engaged in an unrelated task."

16. Human brain subliminally judges
'trustworthiness' of faces
Finding from brain scans adds to evidence that we make spontaneous, largely
unconscious judgments of strangers
The study focused on the activity of the amygdala, a small almond-shaped
region deep inside the brain. The amygdala is intimately involved with
processing strong emotions, such as fear. Its central nucleus sends out the
signals responsible for the famous and evolutionarily crucial "fight-or-flight"
response.
Even so, the brain scans revealed that the amygdala responded differently
to subliminal images of trustworthy and untrustworthy faces. Some
regions of the amygdala reacted to how untrustworthy a face was, while
other regions seemed to register the overall strength of the judgment,
becoming more active only when a face was either very trustworthy or
very untrustworthy.
The human brain can judge the apparent trustworthiness of a face from a glimpse so fleeting, the person has no idea they
have seen it, scientists claim.
Researchers in the US found that brain activity changed in response to how trustworthy a face appeared to be when the
face in question had not been consciously perceived.
Scientists made the surprise discovery during a series of experiments that were designed to shed light on the neural
processes that underpin the snap judgments people make about others.
The findings suggest that parts of our brains are doing more complex subconscious processing of the outside world than
many researchers thought.

17. Psychologists Find that Nice People
Are More Likely to Hurt You
People who are agreeable are also more likely to make destructive choices, if they think doing so will help them
conform to social expectations. That's the finding of psychologists, who suggest that disagreeable, ornery people may
be more helpful than we think.
Researchers recently conducted a version of Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiments, where people were
asked by doctors to "shock" others until they died. Only later did they discover they people they'd "killed" were just
actors. A surprising number of otherwise kindly people "killed" others, just because they'd been given orders.
People with more agreeable, conscientious personalities are more likely to make harmful choices. In these new
obedience experiments, people with more social graces were the ones who complied with the experimenter's wishes
and delivered electric shocks they believed could harm an innocent person. By contrast, people with more contrarian,
less agreeable personalities were more likely to refuse to hurt other people when told to do so.

18. Proxemics Is the Science of Why You Shouldn't
Stand So Close to Me
Proxemics is the study of how people organize their social space. Without
knowing it, we have very strict rules for who goes where in our culture.
Although we don't always think about them, we know when someone's
violating them. In the 1960s, a scientist called Edward Hall studied how
close we let strangers come to us (no closer than twelve feet), social
partners come to us (no closer than four feet), and how close we let close
personal friends and relatives come to us (no closer than 1.5 feet).
Get any closer than that and you're in intimate space - where you should
either be kissing us at the end of a wonderful date or quietly advising us
that we can plead the fifth at a congressional hearing.
Hall noted, however, that these rules only applied to the proxemics of North
Americans, and that not all cultures shared the same established distances
when it came to personal space.
This seating pattern is not declared. It's probably almost
unconscious for most of the people doing the sitting. It's
also so entirely ingrained in the culture.
I can't even imagine what the reaction would be if there
were one person sitting on a bus - and the second passenger
to board the bus chose to sit down right next to them. I'd try
it, but I worry that the first person would either clobber me
or run.

19. Look Angry If You Want People to Give In
“Until we see someone, we don’t know what makes them
sweat, or what makes them angry or happy,” Reed told
Today. “
You can do a lot of things over the Internet now, but people
still choose to have face-to-face meetings.”
One caveat: It won’t work if people can tell you’re faking. If
you’ve got a serious negotiation coming up, dredge up some
real emotion or take an acting class.
In two experiments, people were more willing to give into demands for a larger share of $1 when the person asking for
more money looked angry.
“If you come in with a scowl on your face, they’re going to take your threat more seriously,” study co-author Lawrence Ian
Reed, a researcher at Harvard University, told Today. “You might think a poker face would be better in a negotiation. But
in a bargaining situation when you make threats, your facial expression could add credibility to what you are saying.”
During one of the experiments, 870 participants were given the task of splitting up $1 with someone else. If they couldn’t
agree, neither would get anything. When an actress demanded 70 cents on the dollar with an angry expression, more
people agreed than when she used a neutral expression.
So far, the researchers have only done the experiment with women making the demands; reactions to a threatening male
could be different. And, threatening looks only apply in face-to-face interactions, obviously.

20. Blacks Seen as Darker During Tough
Economic Times
When the economy declines, racial minorities are hit the hardest. Although existing explanations for this effect focus on
institutional causes, recent psychological findings suggest that scarcity may also alter perceptions of race in ways that
exacerbate discrimination.
We tested the hypothesis that economic resource scarcity causes decision makers to perceive African Americans as
“Blacker” and that this visual distortion elicits disparities in the allocation of resources. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated
that scarcity altered perceptions of race, lowering subjects’ psychophysical threshold for seeing a mixed-race face as
“Black” as opposed to “White.” In studies 3 and 4, scarcity led subjects to visualize African American faces as darker and
more “stereotypically Black,” compared with a control condition.
When presented to naïve subjects, face representations produced under scarcity elicited smaller allocations than control-condition
representations. Together, these findings introduce a novel perceptual account for the proliferation of racial
disparities under economic scarcity.

21. Does Breaking Rules Make You Cool?
Do consumers think it’s cool when a brands
breaks a rule?
It all depends on the rule, researchers report in
the Journal of Consumer Research.
“We reasoned that brands could become cool by
breaking rules that seemed unnecessary or
unfair, but not by breaking legitimate rules,” the
authors wrote.
Studies backed up their hypothesis: In one
experiment, researchers asked participants to
gauge their reaction to an ad that either
advocated breaking or following a dress code.
When the ad was accompanied by text that gave a
legitimate reason for the dress code (honoring veterans),
the brand did not seem cooler. But when participants read
that the same dress code existed for an illegitimate reason
(honoring a corrupt dictator), breaking the rule did help the
brand seem cooler.
There’s one caveat, however: it’s nearly impossible to
appear cool to everyone. While one group may tolerate
breaking traditional dress code rules, for example, it might
be seen as deviant by another group.
The researchers defined coolness by autonomy. Brands may
do well in upping their coolness quotient by highlighting
their uniqueness, the researchers suggested.
“Collectively, our studies find that coolness is a subjective,
positive trait perceived in people, brands, products, and
trends that are autonomous in an appropriate way,” the
authors wrote.

22. The Science of Misheard Song Lyrics
There is an actual official term for when you
hear "excuse me while I kiss the sky" in Jimi
Hendrix's "Purple Haze" as "excuse me while
I kiss this guy." Your meaningful misheard
lyrics are called "mondegreens," and their
study can have real psychological
significance.
These little misunderstandings are common, but most people don't
know that there is an official title for them. It came from a popular
essay by writer Sylvia Wright
The lyrics that defy cliché and break new ground are most likely to get
misunderstood. "Excuse me, while I kiss this guy" might have still
been outré in the 1960s when "Purple Haze" was written, but it was
still more familiar than kissing the sky.
We cobble together a semi-plausible lyric because we lack the
experience to understand the real one.
The people who are most likely to do this are the ones most lacking in
experience.
Children group words together, the way they hear them, in a stream of
continuous syllables. They assume the meaning of "donzerly" will come
later, when they hear a few more examples of the word.
We enunciate for small babies, but as children grow, they are expected to
pick up individual words, many of which they've never been exposed to,
in a stream of noise.
Language learners also have difficulty distinguishing one word from
another, which can run them into real trouble in business or medical
settings.
Many researchers have found that mondegreens tend not to travel alone. Once people lose understanding of a sentence,
they lose context as well, causing them to "hear" words that only resemble the actual words being uttered. People,
especially adult English learners, are desperately trying to regain the thread of meaning, and make order out of a chaos of
sounds. Eventually they trick themselves into hearing something that the recognize, even if it doesn't make sense. What
most people need, scientists find, is familiar points where they can get their bearings, and enter back into the thread of the
conversation. If they can't get regular familiar points to orient themselves in a stream of sound, mondegreens will take over
and give them fake points of familiarity.

23. The Diderot Effect Makes You Want to
Consume, Consume, Consume
Diderot Gets a Bathrobe
Denis Diderot was a philosopher during the Enlightenment, which meant he should have been above such petty
things as consumerism. On the other hand, he was also an art critic, and so liked beauty. That might have led to the
situation he described in his essay, "Regrets on Parting With My Old Dressing Gown.“
He had an old beat-up thing that he wore around his small apartment. One day friend gave him a present of a
beautiful scarlet dressing gown. Diderot loved it, but felt it was out of place among his cheap old furniture. He
replaced his straw chair with a leather armchair. He replaced his desk, and the prints on his walls. Then he started
replacing his regular clothes. The tale ends with Diderot in debt and disconsolate, working to maintain his beautiful
room. He used to be the "master" of his possessions, but now he is the "slave" of a dressing gown.
The essay is fictional, and the sentiment is pure romanticism. Don't consider your physical surroundings!
Advance your mind and let go of the physical. We understand Diderot's ideals, but we also understand his
experiences. Who among us hasn't come home with a beautiful new possession, placed it in their home, looked
around, and thought, "This place is a dump."

24. The Diderot Effect Makes You Want to
Consume, Consume, Consume
Just noticing the grubbiness of your regular possessions, when put next to something extraordinarily nice, isn't enough for
you to fall under the spell of the Diderot Effect. To go full Diderot, according to sociologists, we need to start identifying with
our possessions. Unfortunately, we tend to do that already. Most of us have picked up a piece of clothing, or sat on a piece
of furniture, and thought, "No, this isn't me." How could that be? It's just a functional object.
But consumption doesn't work that way. Even the most dressed-down of us uses our clothes to convey a picture of who we
are. We identify ourselves using our possessions. When we do that, we don't just want high quality. In fact, many people
will reject high quality. We want unity. We want to present a coherent whole. This can be a big problem for any companies
that want us to buy things. No matter how good a product they offer, if it falls outside of the consumer's ideas of the unity
of their lives and their looks, they will resist purchasing it. On the other hand, once we own one thing that stands out, that
doesn't fit our current sense of unity, we go on a rampage trying to reconstruct ourselves. Either we throw away the luxury
item, or we start to upgrade ourselves. Few people throw away the luxury item. Most people start replacing the other
things in their lives. This involves a lot of money

25. The Diderot Effect Makes You Want to
Consume, Consume, Consume
How to Use the Diderot Effect
Naturally, there's a lot of focus on how to get people to take that first step out of their identity. Any good that's
considered outside the pattern of someone's regular purchases is called a "departure good." Companies market hard to
get people to make that first move, but they also want to know how to keep people Dideroting.
How does one sample purchase, one luxury, become a whole lifestyle? According to research journals, the key is to make
the item not a purchase, but a replacement. You're not buying a soap dispenser, you're replacing your nasty old
bathroom soap with a nice-looking, efficient soap dispenser. Are you aware that it can come as part of a set? And that
that matches a shower curtain? You're not buying a new pair of shoes, you're replacing an old pair with something
simple and timeless - that you can't wear with jeans so get some nice skirts or slacks. Much of what we buy today is a
kind of a taster product for a complete lifestyle. People aren't supposed to be springing for one big luxury purchase, they
are meant to be buying better selves. That takes repeat business.

26. Want to be happier? Skip the small talk.
We all know those people. Maybe you’re one of them. The person who manages, despite
all the stress and work it takes to get through a normal day, to always be happy. How do
they do it? What is their secret?
Although it’s likely that genetics play a major role in determining one’s happiness, it’s also
thought that behavior can help (or hinder) you on your path to bliss. These scientists asked
whether the content of peoples’ conversation is related to their overall happiness.
They recorded participants’ conversations during daily life, and sure enough, they found
that people who had deeper conversations tended to be happier than those who spent
time on small talk.

27. Scientists finally explain why your
grandma will never find “Borat” funny
Identifying social gaffes is important for maintaining relationships. Older adults are less able than young to discriminate
between socially appropriate and inappropriate behavior in video clips. One open question is how these social
appropriateness ratings relate to potential age differences in the perception of what is actually funny or not.
In the present study, young, middle-aged, and older adults were equally able to discriminate between appropriate and
inappropriate social behavior in a diverse set of clips relevant across age groups. However, young and middle-aged adults
rated the gaffe clips as funnier than control clips and young adults smiled more during the inappropriate clips than the
control clips.
Older adults did not show this pattern, suggesting that they did not find the inappropriate clips funny. Additionally, young
adults endorsed a more aggressive humor style than middle-aged and older adults and aggressive humor style
endorsement mediated age differences in social appropriateness ratings. Results are discussed in terms of possible
mechanisms such as cohort differences in humor and developmental prioritization of certain humor styles, as well as the
importance of investigating age differences in both abilities and preferences

28. Coffee Drinkers Have Trouble Talking
About Emotions?
Alexithymia refers to difficulties with identifying, describing, and regulating one's own emotions. This trait dimension has
been linked to risky or harmful use of alcohol and illicit drugs; however, the most widely used psychoactive drug in the
world, caffeine, has not been examined previously in relation to alexithymia.
The present study assessed 106 male and female university students aged 18-30 years on their caffeine use in relation to
several traits, including alexithymia. The 18 participants defined as alexithymic based on their Toronto Alexithymia Scale
(TAS-20) scores reported consuming nearly twice as much caffeine per day as did non-alexithymic or borderline alexithymic
participants.
They also scored significantly higher than controls on indices of frontal lobe dysfunction as well as anxiety symptoms and
sensitivity to punishment. In a hierarchical linear regression model, sensitivity to punishment negatively predicted daily
caffeine intake, suggesting caffeine avoidance by trait-anxious individuals. Surprisingly, however, TAS-20 alexithymia scores
positively predicted caffeine consumption.
Possible reasons for the positive relationship between caffeine use and alexithymia are discussed, concluding that this
outcome is tentatively consistent with the hypo-arousal model of alexithymia.

29. Could Diet Sodas Be Making Us Fatter?
The artificial sweeteners in “diet” beverages, thought to
help people trim their waistlines, may be having the
opposite effect.
A new study reveals that three of the leading artificial
sweeteners produce an increase in blood-sugar levels in
both mice and humans, by disrupting the balance of helpful
gut bacteria. High blood-sugar levels, in turn, are the telltale
sign of glucose intolerance, a condition which can evolve
into diabetes and metabolic disease.
To be clear, researchers aren’t certain how artificial sweeteners and gut microbes interact to
produce glucose intolerance.
Furthermore, not everyone in the small human trial experienced the same reaction.
Many things influence our metabolism, and some people may be more sensitive than
others to artificial sweeteners, as Forbes reports.

30. Shut up and pet me! Dogs prefer
petting to vocal praise
It’s probably no surprise that dogs like to be petted. But do they prefer petting over other
types of attention? Here, two scientists from the University of Florida tested whether dogs
would prefer to be petted or given vocal praise, and whether it mattered if the petting/praise
came from an owner or a stranger.
Turns out that dogs love pets, regardless of who is doing the petting, and they never seem to
get tired of being petted. Interestingly, a previous study by the same authors found that dogs
do like one thing even more than petting: food. Perhaps a future study will determine where
chasing their tails ranks on the list?

31. Ignore IQ Tests: Your Level of
Intelligence Is Not Fixed for Life
Those who hang dearly onto the notion that IQ is fixed for life have managed to ignore decades of published research in the
field of applied behavior analysis. This has reported very large IQ gains in children with autism who have been exposed to
early intensive behavioral interventions once they have been diagnosed with learning difficulties.
Another 2009 Norwegian study examined the effects of an increase in the duration of compulsory schooling in Norway in
the 1960s which lengthened the time in education for Norwegians by two years. The researchers used records of cognitive
ability taken by the military to calculate the IQ of each individual in the study. They found that IQ had increased by 3.7
points for every extra year of education received.
More recent studies by John Jonides and his colleagues at the University of Michigan reported improvements in objective
measures of intelligence for those who practiced a brain-training task called the “n-back task” – a kind of computerized
memory test.
My own research, in the field of relational frame theory, has shown that understanding relations between words, such as
“more than,” “less than” or “opposite” is crucial for our intellectual development. One recent pilot study showed that we
can considerably raise standard IQ scores by training children in relational language skills tasks over a period of months.
Again, this finding challenges the idea that intelligence is fixed for life.
even exceed them.

32. Research Shows that Seven Hours of
Sleep Might Be the Sweet Spot
The Wall Street Journal looked at a few different studies. Here's a summation of just a few of them:
"The lowest mortality and morbidity is with seven hours," said Shawn Youngstedt, a professor in the College of Nursing and
Health Innovation at Arizona State University Phoenix. "Eight hours or more has consistently been shown to be hazardous,"
says Dr. Youngstedt, who researches the effects of oversleeping...
...Daniel F. Kripke, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego, tracked over a six-year
period data on 1.1 million people who participated in a large cancer study. People who reported they slept 6.5 to 7.4 hours
had a lower mortality rate than those with shorter or longer sleep. The study, published in the Archives of General
Psychiatry in 2002, controlled for 32 health factors, including medications...
...A study in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience last year used data from users of the cognitive-training website
Lumosity. Researchers looked at the self-reported sleeping habits of about 160,000 users who took spatial-memory and
matching tests and about 127,000 users who took an arithmetic test. They found that cognitive performance increased as
people got more sleep, reaching a peak at seven hours before starting to decline.

33. Scientists use MRI to measure precisely
how your butt deforms when you sit down.
RESULTS: MRIs indicated a marked decrease in muscle thickness under the ischial tuberosity during
loaded sitting. This change in thickness resulted from a combination of muscle displacement and
distortion. The gluteus and hamstrings overlapped beneath the pelvis in an unloaded condition,
enveloping the ischial tuberosity. But the overlap was removed under load.
The hamstrings moved anteriorly, while the gluteus moved posterior-laterally. Under load, neither muscle
was directly beneath the apex of the ischial tuberosity. Furthermore, there was a change in muscle shape,
particularly posterior to the peak of the ischial tuberosity.
CONCLUSION: The complex deformation of buttocks tissue seen in this case study may help explain the
inconsistent results reported in finite element models. 3D imaging of the seated buttocks provides a
unique opportunity to study the actual buttocks response to sitting.”

34. The Science Behind Why You Never
Really Leave High School
You also store your most vivid memories during this time (from ages 15 to 25), which can
make traumatic experiences all the more traumatizing.
In other words, you are already poised biologically to be deeply impressed by experiences
around you at this time while, simultaneously, you form your first sense of identity, and then
you’re thrown into a hard, judgmental place. Oof.
The insecurities we form in high school are often the ones we carry with us later, even when
those no longer have any basis in reality (if they ever did at all — further in the article they
discuss just how skewed teenagers perception of other’s feelings towards them are).

35. Scientists figured out how shrooms open your mind
The study of rapid changes in brain dynamics and functional connectivity (FC) is of increasing interest in neuroimaging. Brain
states departing from normal waking consciousness are expected to be accompanied by alterations in the aforementioned
dynamics. In particular, the psychedelic experience produced by psilocybin (a substance found in “magic mushrooms”) is
characterized by unconstrained cognition and profound alterations in the perception of time, space and selfhood.
Considering the spontaneous and subjective manifestation of these effects, we hypothesize that neural correlates of the
psychedelic experience can be found in the dynamics and variability of spontaneous brain activity fluctuations and
connectivity, measurable with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Fifteen healthy subjects were scanned
before, during and after intravenous infusion of psilocybin and an inert placebo.
Blood-Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) temporal variability was assessed computing the variance and total spectral power,
resulting in increased signal variability bilaterally in the hippocampi and anterior cingulate cortex. Changes in BOLD signal
spectral behavior (including spectral scaling exponents) affected exclusively higher brain systems such as the default mode,
executive control, and dorsal attention networks. A novel framework enabled us to track different connectivity states
explored by the brain during rest. This approach revealed a wider repertoire of connectivity states post-psilocybin than
during control conditions. Together, the present results provide a comprehensive account of the effects of psilocybin on
dynamical behavior in the human brain at a macroscopic level and may have implications for our understanding of the
unconstrained, hyper-associative quality of consciousness in the psychedelic state

36. Want to improve your cognitive function?
Try some whole body vibration!
Have you ever seen those old movies of people using body vibration machines for “exercise”
(see photo)? Well, apparently the principle behind those machines isn’t total BS.
Although whole body vibration (WBV) might not make you lose weight or get in better shape,
it can actually provide some of the same brain-stimulating benefits as exercise.
More specifically, as shown by this study, WBV can improve one’s attention and inhibition (the
ability to tune out irrelevant stimuli).
The authors hypothesize that WBV improves these aspects of cognitive function by producing
similar physiological responses as exercise, including increased oxygen uptake and heart rate.
I’ll shake on that!

37. The price of love? Losing two of your closest friends
Research reveals that, on average, having a new romantic
partner pushes out two close friends from your inner circle
In a separate study, Dunbar's team looked at how men
and women maintained friendships on the social
networking website Facebook. They found that women's
Facebook friends were more often friends from everyday
life that they spent time with, while men tended to collect
as many friends as they could, even if they hardly knew
them.
"Boys seem to be in a competition to see who can have
the most Faccebook friends and that could be a form of
mate advertisting. One of the cues women use for male
quality as a mate is the number of other girls chasing
them, so signing up lots of girls as Facebook friends seems
to be a good idea," said Dunbar.
Falling in love comes at the cost of losing close friends, because romantic partners absorb time that would otherwise be
invested in platonic relationships, researchers say.
A new partner pushes out two close friends on average, leaving lovers with a smaller inner circle of people they can turn to
in times of crisis, a study found.
Previous research by Dunbar's group has shown that people typically have five very close relationships – that is, people
whom they would turn to if they were in emotional or financial trouble.
"If you go into a romantic relationship, it costs you two friends. Those who have romantic relationships, instead of having
the typical five 'core set' of relationships only have four. And of those, one is the new person who's come into their life,"
said Dunbar.

38. How Come We're So Bad at Buying
Stuff?
http://news.discovery.com/human/videos/how-come-were-so-bad-at-buying-stuff-video-
140619.htm
We've all enjoyed a little retail therapy -- or thought we did! -- but why does
buyer's remorse so often set in? And why do we seem to lose all control over
logic when that next big, shiny purchase calls our name?

39. What Makes Cursive So Good For Your
Brain - Video
http://news.discovery.com/human/videos/what-makes-cursive-
so-good-for-your-brain-video-140612.htm

40. The early bird catches the worm… or
at least the boss’s good opinion
In this research, we draw from the stereotyping literature to suggest that supervisor ratings of job performance are
affected by employees' start times-the time of day they first arrive at work.
Even when accounting for total work hours, objective job performance, and employees' self-ratings of conscientiousness,
we find that a later start time leads supervisors to perceive employees as less conscientious.
These perceptions in turn cause supervisors to rate employees as lower performers. In addition, we show that supervisor
chronotype acts as a boundary condition of the mediated model. Supervisors who prefer eveningness (i.e., owls) are less
likely to hold negative stereotypes of employees with late start times than supervisors who prefer morningness (i.e., larks).
Taken together, our results suggest that supervisor ratings of job performance are susceptible to stereotypic beliefs based
on employees' start times.

41. Is Laughter the Best Medicine?
We all want to believe that laughter is good for what ails us, but the science backing that up is thin. Most studies have
been small and have relied on self-reported assessments.
"A good belly laugh leads to the release of endorphins from the brain," says Michael Miller, director of the Center for
Preventive Cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.
That release sets off a cascade of heart-healthy biological events. Endorphins, pleasure-inducing neurotransmitters,
activate receptors on the surface of the endothelium, the layer of flat cells lining blood vessels. That leads to the release
of nitric oxide, which widens blood vessels—increasing blood flow, lessening inflammation, inhibiting platelet clumping,
and reducing the formation of cholesterol plaque.
A 2005 study by Miller measured the blood flow of 20 volunteers before and after watching a funny movie and a sad
movie. After the sad movie, blood flow was more restricted in 14 of the 20 viewers. But after the movie that made them
laugh, average blood flow increased by 22 percent.
"The best laugh is one that brings tears to our eyes," says Miller, author of Heal Your Heart: The Positive Emotions
Prescription to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, scheduled for publication by Rodale Press in September. His
prescription: at least 30 minutes of exercise at least three times a week—and 15 minutes of daily laughter.
But her study of 33 healthy women, published in 2003, showed that those who laughed at a humorous movie had higher
levels of natural killer cell activity, which increased their ability to fight off disease. However, the effect was seen only in
the subjects who laughed out loud, not in those who quietly watched the comedy.
A study in Japan that also used laboratory findings found that laughter could improve anti-inflammatory factors in the
blood of people who have rheumatoid arthritis.

42. Why Molly Is Especially Deadly at Summer Music Festivals
Eugene A. Kiyatkin, the study’s lead author and a scientist at the behavioral neuroscience branch of NIDA, zeroed in on the
physiological mechanisms involved in fatal hyperthermia (overheating of the body to the point of death). “What’s new
about this study is that it focuses on MDMA’s effects on brain temperature and clarifies the physiological mechanisms
involved,” he tells The Daily Beast. “By recording data from the brain, muscle, and skin, we were able to show that MDMA
raises heat in the brain by increasing brain activity as well as causing a strong, lasting constriction of peripheral blood
vessels that prevents the normal dissipation of excess body heat to the external environment. These combined effects may
be enhanced in conditions when brain and body heat production are naturally increased—such as social interaction—or
when shedding excess heat is difficult, as it is in a warm environment.”
When the body undergoes fatal hyperthermia—internal temperature rising to the point of brain damage—it’s fluid in the
brain that leads the march to death. After MDMA raises heat production and constricts blood vessels, the internal body
temperature increases, damaging brain cells irreparably. While this increase in brain temperature is incredibly destructive,
it’s not the actual killer.
“The main mechanism leading to death from psychostimulant drugs appears to be leaking of the brain-blood barrier—
which keeps most chemicals in the blood out of the brain—and water accumulation in the brain,” says Kiyatakin. It’s for this
reason that concertgoers thinking hydration is the key to staying safe (“if you just drink enough water you’ll be fine”) is so
dangerous. “The excessive use of liquids often used by people at dance clubs could be problematic if they take MDMA,”
says Kiyatakin. “In addition to its other effects, it inhibits both sweating and urination, which expel water from the body.
These factors could also contribute to dangerous water accumulation in the brain.”

43. We May Finally Know Why Sleep Improves Memory
The results were stark: Gan and his colleagues found that the sleep-deprived mice sprouted significantly fewer dendritic
spines than those that were permitted to rest, and the rate of spine formation was correlated with the degree of task
improvement. Growth was shown to be most dramatic during the slow-wave, non-REM stage of sleep. What's more, the
benefits of sleep seem to carry on well after the mice woke up, with roughly 5% of new spines in the motor cortex
developing in the 24 hours after the mice awoke. The mice that slept were also more likely to retain the spines they grew. In
some circumstances, it seems sleep could in fact lead to the growth of new synapses.
The researchers went on to demonstrate that the neuronal branches involved in the rod-balancing task were reactivated
during this period of slow-wave sleep. Neuroal reactivation during sleep has been observed in the past, but Gan's team took
it a step further by blocking the reactivation. When they did, it impeded the formation of new spines, suggesting that
reactivation plays some role in stabilizing the dendritic spines sprouted during sleep.
Finally, Gan tells io9 that one of the study's most surprising findings was not directly related to sleep. In a previous study,
Gan and his colleagues used the skull-window technique to demonstrate that teaching mice to balance atop the rod led to
the formation of new spines along dendrites in the motor cortex. The present study corroborates those findings, but it also
shows that teaching the mice a new motor task (for instance, balancing on the rod as it spins in the reverse direction)
caused dendritic spines to sprout on an entirely new dendritic branch – i.e., a branch distinct from the one that shot out
spines in reaction to learning to balance on a forward-spinning rod. In other words: learning a new motor skill won't cause
dendritic spines to appear just anywhere. Rather, the team's findings suggest that synaptic change in the mammalian brain
occurs in a site-specific fashion.

44. Cocaine addiction linked to brain abnormalities
Scans showed cocaine users
had enlarged grey matter in
areas of the brain associated
with processing reward.
Specifically, the amount of grey matter in the orbitofrontal cortex was reduced in people with cocaine addiction, an area
involved in decision-making and goal-directed behaviour.
Other affected areas included the insula, an area of the brain involved in feedback processing, learning and feelings of
cravings. The grey matter in the anterior cingulate, involved in emotional processing and being attentive, was also reduced.
In contrast, a region deep in the brain associated with reward processing, attention and motor movements - the caudate
nucleus - was enlarged in subjects who were addicted to the drug. This could explain why those subjects were more prone
to addiction but the scientists cannot be sure whether the enlargement is a result of cocaine use.
Laurence John Reed, a clinical senior lecturer in addiction neurobiology at Imperial College London, said the "most
impressive" results were the basic comparison of controls and stimulant users, which showed how parts of the brain
remodel themselves in response to drugs. "This is a striking and visual example of how addictive stimulant use can result in
adaptation of very important brain systems which have a direct correlates with behaviour – specifically inattention,
impulsivity and compulsivity – and really does underline why we need a much better neurobiological understanding of the
processes involved."
Ersche said that, though she found links between brain structure and cocaine use,her research was not conclusive on which
came first. "At the moment, correlation shows me a direct relationship - but I don't know which direction the relationship is.
Has this been caused by cocaine, or are people who have this abnormality more vulnerable?"

45. Why teenagers can't concentrate:
too much grey matter
The scans revealed an unexpected level of activity in the prefrontal cortex, a large region at the front of the brain involved
in decision-making and multitasking. This indicated that the brain was working less effectively than that of an adult.
"We knew that the prefrontal cortex of young children functioned in this chaotic way but we didn't realise it continued
until the late 20s or early 30s," said Dr Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, who led the study. "What we discovered was that the part
of the brain needed to complete this sort of process is still very much developing throughout adolescence. This means it
continues to do a lot of needless work when making these sorts of decisions."
Chaotic thought patterns are a result, she said, of teenagers' brains containing too much grey matter – the cell bodies and
connections which carry messages within the brain. As we age, the amount of grey matter in our brains decreases.
"What our research has shown is that there is simply too much going on in the brains of adolescents," said Blakemore.
"The result is that their brain energy and resources are wasted and their decision-making process negatively affected."
Adults, on the other hand, have less grey matter, said Blakemore. "This means that neural transmissions travel more
efficiently between brain cells, so the brain works more effectively."

46. Do You Feel Like You're Not Sleeping,
Even When You Are?
In last week's issue of New Scientist, Ann Finkbeiner has a terrific article about the people who suffer from
pseudoinsomnia, and a handful of scientists who are trying to figure out what their brains have in common. When they
used conventional methods of analyzing the brain wave patterns of sleepers, it appeared that these pseudoinsomniacs
were no different than any other sleeper. But then they tried something new. They analyzed the readouts of brain
waves using an algorithm that's normally used for spectral analysis in physics.
And that's when they began to see a pattern — a pattern that suggested these peoples' sleep cycles were being
interrupted by brain wave patterns associated with fear, anxiety, and wakefulness.
What's fascinating is that similar patterns of alpha, beta and gamma waves show up in the brain wave patterns of
people who suffer from chronic pain and anxiety as well. It's possible that this "always-on" brain pattern leads to a
variety of nervous symptoms, including being unable to get the benefits of a healthy night's sleep.

47. Do Porn Watchers Have Smaller Brains?
If you watch a lot of porn, your brain may show it,
new research suggests.
German researchers looked at the brains of 64 men
between the ages of 21 and 45 and found that one
brain region (the striatum, linked to reward
processing), was smaller in the brains of porn
watchers, and that a specific part of the same region
is also less activated when exposed to more
pornography. The study, published in JAMA
Psychiatry, also showed that the connection between
the striatum and prefrontal cortex seemed to be
weaker in brains of men who watched porn.
“Basically everything that people do very frequently can
shape their brain structure and function,” Simone Kühn, the
study's lead author from the Max Planck Institute for Human
Development told Reuters.
Still, the study doesn't confirm whether watching porn
causes the changes, or whether people with a certain brain
type are inherently more apt to tune into X-rated content.
But because the areas of the brain that appear to be
affected are linked to rewards and motivation and decision
making, some have suggested that porn watchers may be
lazier and poor decision-makers.
"Everything is going to be bad in excess and it's probably not
terrible in moderation," Dr. Gregory Tau of the Columbia
University/New York State Psychiatric Institute, who was not
involved in the study, told Reuters.

48. The Science Behind Caffeine's Productivity-
Enhancing Effects
1. Caffeine comes into your body whole.
2. Then the caffeine molecule enters your liver, where
enzymes cut off three methyl groups to form three more
small molecules.
3. The molecules in question are theobromine,
paraxanthine, and theophylline.
4. Together with the original caffeine molecule, they
heighten your brain activity, get nutrients flowing, increase
your athleticism, and boost your focus.

49. Scientists Discover Area Of Brain
Responsible For Loving Johnny Cash
Music is among all cultures an important part of the live of most people. Music has psychological benefits and may
generate strong emotional and physiological responses.
Recently, neuroscientists have discovered that music influences the reward circuit of the nucleus accumbens (NAcc),
even when no explicit reward is present. In this clinical case study, we describe a 60-year old patient who developed
a sudden and distinct musical preference for Johnny Cash following deep brain stimulation (DBS) targeted at the
NAcc.
This case report substantiates the assumption that the NAcc is involved in musical preference, based on the
observation of direct stimulation of the accumbens with DBS. It also shows that accumbens DBS can change musical
preference without habituation of its rewarding properties

50. Does the Name-Letter Effect Prove
That You're Soooo Into Yourself?
And the spousal studies? Similar, or matching, names are
also influenced by culture, but there's a more basic
reason marrying spouses tend to have the same last
name. A surprising amount of studies neglected to check
whether the bride changed her name before the
ceremony. So if two Taylors were wed, one of them might
have had a different name, but changed it during the
ramp up to the wedding.
So while we do like ourselves enough to get sentimental
about our names, we probably aren't crazy enough to
choose our entire mode of life depending on our name.
Studies found that woman found the letters of their own initials to be feminine and men found their initials to be
masculine. My name, and my initials, are me, we have collectively decided. And it looks like people feel pretty good about
themselves. Extended surveys found that people tend to settle, disproportionately, in towns that are alliterative, in jobs
that are alliterative, and with spouses who are alliterative. Some people even choose towns and spouses with their own
names. How much of an inducement is in a name?
Some people, for example internet writers, might find alliterative spousal names so insufferably twee that they'd change
their own name to get away from such an atrocity. (Seriously, that was only okay with the Roosevelts.) Others, like
scientists, think that gravitating towards our initials is a sign of intrinsic self-esteem, or egotism. We want more of
ourselves.

51. Which matters more for attractiveness: a
woman’s face or body?
“Women’s faces and bodies are both thought to provide cues to women’s age, health, fertility, and personality. To gain a
stronger understanding of how these cues are utilized, we investigated the degree to which ratings of women’s faces and
bodies independently predicted ratings of women’s full-body attractiveness. Women came into the lab not knowing they
would be photographed. In Study 1 (N = 84), we photographed them in their street clothes; in Study 2 (N = 74), we
photographed women in a solid-colored two-piece swimsuit that revealed their body shape, body size, and breast size.
We cropped each woman’s original photo into an additional face-only photo and body-only photo; then, independent
sets of raters judged women’s pictures.
When dressed in their original clothes, women’s face-only ratings were better independent predictors of full-body
attractiveness ratings than were their body-only ratings. When cues displayed in women’s bodies were made
conspicuous by swimsuits, ratings of faces and bodies were similarly strong predictors of full-body attractiveness ratings.
Moreover, women’s body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio were tied to ratings of women’s body attractiveness, with
waist-to-hip ratio more important among women wearing swimsuits than among women wearing their original clothes.
These results suggest that perceivers attend to cues of women’s health, fertility, and personality to the extent that they
are visible.”

52. NCBI ROFL: Surprise! Men vote for the
hotter female candidate.
Here we reveal gender biases in the intuitive heuristics that voters use when deciding
whom to vote for in major political elections. Our findings underscore the impact of
gender and physical appearance on shaping voter decision-making and provide novel
insight into the psychological foundations underlying the political gender gap.”

53. NCBI ROFL: The presence of an attractive woman elevates
testosterone and physical risk taking in young men.
“The authors report a field experiment with skateboarders that demonstrates that physical risk taking by young
men increases in the presence of an attractive female. This increased risk taking leads to more successes but
also more crash landings in front of a female observer.
Mediational analyses suggest that this increase in risk taking is caused in part by elevated testosterone levels of
men who performed in front of the attractive female. In addition, skateboarders’ risk taking was predicted by
their performance on a reversal-learning task, reversal-learning performance was disrupted by the presence of
the attractive female, and the female’s presence moderated the observed relationship between risk taking and
reversal learning.
These results suggest that men use physical risk taking as a sexual display strategy, and they provide suggestive
evidence regarding possible hormonal and neural mechanisms.”

54. NCBI ROFL: Beauty week: Blond, busty,
skinny waitresses get bigger tips.
“Waitresses completed an on-line survey about their physical characteristics,
self-perceived attractiveness and sexiness, and average tips. The waitresses’
self-rated physical attractiveness increased with their breast sizes and decreased
with their ages, waist-to-hip ratios, and body sizes. Similar effects were
observed on self-rated sexiness, with the exception of age, which varied with
self-rated sexiness in a negative, quadratic relationship rather than a linear one.
Moreover, the waitresses’ tips varied with age in a negative, quadratic
relationship, increased with breast size, increased with having blond hair, and
decreased with body size.
These findings, which are discussed from an evolutionary perspective, make
several contributions to the literature on female physical attractiveness. First,
they replicate some previous findings regarding the determinants of female
physical attractiveness using a larger, more diverse, and more ecologically valid
set of stimuli than has been studied before.
Second, they provide needed evidence that some of those determinants of
female beauty affect interpersonal behaviors as well as attractiveness ratings.
Finally, they indicate that some determinants of female physical attractiveness
do not have the same effects on overt interpersonal behavior (such as tipping)
that they have on attractiveness ratings.
This latter contribution highlights the need for more ecologically valid tests of
evolutionary theories about the determinants and consequences of female
beauty.”

55. NCBI ROFL: Why poor, hungry men
prefer bigger breasts.
It has been suggested human female breast size may act as signal of fat reserves,
which in turn indicates access to resources. Based on this perspective, two studies
were conducted to test the hypothesis that men experiencing relative resource
insecurity should perceive larger breast size as more physically attractive than men
experiencing resource security.
In Study 1, 266 men from three sites in Malaysia varying in relative socioeconomic
status (high to low) rated a series of animated figures varying in breast size for
physical attractiveness.
Results showed that men from the low socioeconomic context rated larger breasts as
more attractive than did men from the medium socioeconomic context, who in turn
perceived larger breasts as attractive than men from a high socioeconomic context.
Study 2 compared the breast size judgements of 66 hungry versus 58 satiated men
within the same environmental context in Britain.
Results showed that hungry men rated larger breasts as significantly more attractive
than satiated men. Taken together, these studies provide evidence that resource
security impacts upon men’s attractiveness ratings based on women’s breast size.

56. More Evidence That Longevity
Depends on Your State of Mind
Of course, correlation is not causation. Having a sense of purpose isn't
what's making people live longer. Rather, having a sense of purpose
can give rise to healthy habits while diminishing a number of risk
factors; setting large and long-term goals serves as a protective shield.
For example, people with clearly defined goals may be less apt to
abuse alcohol and drugs, which can be seen as a distraction, escape, or
a barrier to achieving one's goals. A sense of purpose may also result
in a more socially engaged life, particularly if helping people is a key
motivator; studies show that social alienation is risk factor en par with
excessive smoking and alcoholism.
We all know that having goals is important, but a joint US-Canadian study reveals that having a sense of purpose can
affect our longevity. Remarkably, it doesn't matter how old we are or what we aspire to — as long as we have goals,
we live longer.
Psychologists have known for some time that a sense of purpose is a key indicator of healthy aging, including its
potential for reducing mortality risk. But this new study, which now appears in Psychological Science, extends
previous findings in two important ways. First, it shows that a sense of purpose is beneficial across a person's entire
adult lifespan, and second, that mortality rates — and by inference health — can indeed be correlated with having a
purpose in life.
So a sense of purpose could be derived from a desire to climb the corporate ladder, writing a book, running for
office, or improving one's performance in art or at the gym. These ambitions can also serve as stepping stones to
other goals, such as financial stability and raising children. And in fact, the most frequently cited purposes had to do
with helping other people or trying to improve the social structure.

57. Smart Drugs Could Be Impairing The Brains Of
Young People
Authors looked at two stimulants in particular, methylphenidate and modafinil.
Sold as Ritalin and Concerta to treat ADHD, methylphenidate works by increasing the level of neurotransmitters in the
nervous system. Trials on rats have shown that young, developing brains are particularly sensitive to methylphenidate.
Low dosages can reduce nerve activity, working memory, and the ability to quickly switch between tasks and behaviors.
Altering glutamate function via the use of psychostimulants may impair behavioral flexibility, leading to the development
and/or potentiation of addictive behaviors.
Furthermore, dopamine and norepinephrine do not display linear effects; instead, their modulation of cognitive and
neuronal function maps on an inverted-U curve.
Healthy individuals run the risk of pushing themselves beyond optimal levels into hyperdopaminergic and
hypernoradrenergic states, thus vitiating the very behaviors they are striving to improve.

58. Are 'Lucky Streaks' Real? Science Says Yes
Bettors are more likely to win once they're
on a winning streak, for a precisely ironic
reason.
The study, published this month in the journal Cognition, also found that losses can breed
more losses. After losing twice, the chances of winning decreased to 40 percent. After four
losses, the chance of winning was 27 percent. After six duds, you have only a 23 percent
chance of winning. The explanation: after each loss, gamblers on average choose bets that
are less likely to turn out, apparently assuming that they are more likely to win than before--
and perhaps to make up their losses (although, on average, people gamble less after each
loss). As you probably know, bets with a lower chance of winning have higher payouts.
The idea that one is more likely to lose after winning, or more likely to win after losing, is
known as the gambler's fallacy (in reality, all things being equal, one is just as likely to lose or
win on any given bet, assuming one is betting on independent events that don't effect each
other's outcomes, as is the case with the vast majority of sports bets). This stands in contrast
to the "hot hand fallacy": that one is more likely to win while on a hot streak. Bettors
apparently don't generally believe this to be true, or at least their behavior suggests they
don't.
"The result is ironic: Winners worried their good luck was not going to continue, so they
selected safer odds," the researchers wrote. "By doing so, they became more likely to win.
The losers expected the luck to turn, so they took riskier odds. However, this made them
even more likely to lose. The gamblers’ fallacy created the hot hand."
The study found that when a person wins a bet, they become increasingly likely to succeed after each win. The converse is
also true: Once you lose a bet, you become progressively more likely to keep losing.
The fascinating study looked at 565,915 sports bets made by 776 online gamblers in Europe and the United States, and
found that, all things being equal, you're likely to win or lose 48 percent of the time (draws presumably account for the
remaining 4 percent). After a single winning bid, the chance of winning a second goes up ever so slightly to 49 percent.
But here's where things get interesting. After the second win, the chance of winning a third time increases to 57 percent.
After that: 67 percent. Following a four-bet winning streak, the chances of scoring a fifth haul increase to 72 percent. The
probability of a sixth win is then 75 percent, and finally, after six wins, bettors had a 76 percent chance of notching lucky
No. 7.

59. The Othello Error Makes You Sure Everyone is Lying
Ever heard of Othello error? It's the unfortunate
mindset that leads questioners to believe people
are lying, even when they're telling the truth.
It can cause them to use understandable
coincidences as damning evidence, and getting
rid of it can make us better at judging honesty.
The innocent, but incriminating, coincidence is a staple of comedy. The heroine picks up a purse that's nearly identical
to her own, and finds she's stolen her future mother-in-law's wallet. A hero hesitates to tell his boss he was at a
proctology appointment because the woman he has a crush on is in the room, and gets so flushed and red-faced that
the boss figures he must be guilty of something. The audience laughs because we've all been stuck in circumstances
that make us look guilty when we're not, and then gotten so flustered during our explanations that we look even
more guilty. Usually these circumstances are, at least in retrospect, comic.
This kind of misunderstanding can also have dark results, as we see in dramatic works like Othello. Desdemona is the
victim of villainous interference rather than mere coincidence, but her increasingly frantic attempts to correct the
situation only make her look more guilty. She looks guilty because Othello suspects she's guilty. Once he starts
looking at everything she does with suspicion, everything she does is suspicious.

60. How 'Hyperpalatable' Foods Could Turn You Into
A Food Addict
Over a third of the global population is now
overweight, and the percentages are increasing.
Some neuroscientists have suggested that the rise of
so-called "hyperpalatable foods" may partially
explain the unprecedented rates of obesity.
Eventually, the experience of eating impossibly delicious foods results in what Kessler describes as "conditioned
hypereating." When we consume enjoyable sugary and fatty foods, it stimulates endorphins in our brains — chemicals
that signal a pleasurable experience. In turn, and in Pavlovian fashion, these chemicals stimulate us to eat more of that
type of food, while also calming us down and making us feel good. Conditioned hypereating sounds suspiciously similar to
what we might call food addiction. And indeed, studies have shown that hyperpalatable foods may be capable of
triggering an addictive process — one that's been postulated as a possible cause of the obesity epidemic.
But is it fair or reasonable to categorize food — something we need to keep us alive — alongside such things as illicit
drugs, alcohol, and gambling? Some scientists say yes.
Last year, for example, neuroscientists from Connecticut College claimed that Oreo cookies are more addictive than
cocaine. The researchers came to this conclusion after measuring a protein called c-Fos in the brains of rats. They found
that the cookies activated more neurons in the accumbens — a region of the brain associated with pleasure, and studied
for its role in addiction and reward-processing — than addictive substances like cocaine. Not surprisingly, the researchers
were harshly criticized for suggesting that something as apparently benign as an Oreo cookie could be compared to a
notorious party drug.

61. Men Without Beards Could Soon Have An
Evolutionary Advantage
But the context did matter. When facial hair was rare among
faces, beards and heavy stubble were rated about 20% more
attractive. And when beards were common, clean-shaven faces
enjoyed a similar bump, the team reports online today in Biology
Letters. The effect on judgment was the same for men and
women.
“This study breaks new ground,” says Peter Frost, an
anthropologist at the Interuniversity Centre for Aboriginal Studies
and Research in Quebec City, Canada. Although previous studies
have shown that people prefer novelty for certain traits, such as
the color of clothing, this study shows “that the novelty effect
applies not only to colors but also to other visible features [of the
body],” he says. But hipsters shouldn’t let their beards get too
gnarly. “There are certainly limits to this effect,” Frost says.
“Something can be novel but also disgusting.”
Negative frequency-dependent sexual selection maintains striking polymorphisms in secondary sexual traits in several
animal species. Here, we test whether frequency of beardedness modulates perceived attractiveness of men's facial hair,
a secondary sexual trait subject to considerable cultural variation.
We first showed participants a suite of faces, within which we manipulated the frequency of beard thicknesses and then
measured preferences for four standard levels of beardedness. Women and men judged heavy stubble and full beards
more attractive when presented in treatments where beards were rare than when they were common, with intermediate
preferences when intermediate frequencies of beardedness were presented.
Likewise, clean-shaven faces were least attractive when clean-shaven faces were most common and more attractive
when rare. This pattern in preferences is consistent with negative frequency-dependent selection.

62. Over the Hill? Cognitive Speeds Peak at Age 24
Those grim “over the hill” party favors are often deployed ironically by
those who want to razz their friends or partners when they turn 30 or
40. But it may be more honest than we care to admit: A new study
suggests humans’ cognitive speed peaks at age 24, and that it’s a
steady downhill descent from there.
The study is limited by the fact that it only focused on video game
players. But in analyzing a dataset of over 3,000 StarCraft 2 players
between the ages of 16 and 44, researchers determined that in-game
response times, or cognitive speed, peaked in players at 24 years of
age
The present study investigates age-related changes in cognitive motor performance through adolescence and
adulthood in a complex real world task, the real-time strategy video game StarCraft 2. In this paper we analyze the
influence of age on performance using a dataset of 3,305 players, aged 16-44, collected by Thompson, Blair, Chen &
Henrey [1].
Using a piecewise regression analysis, we find that age-related slowing of within-game, self-initiated response times
begins at 24 years of age. We find no evidence for the common belief expertise should attenuate domain-specific
cognitive decline. Domain-specific response time declines appear to persist regardless of skill level. A second analysis of
dual-task performance finds no evidence of a corresponding age-related decline.
Finally, an exploratory analyses of other age-related differences suggests that older participants may have been
compensating for a loss in response speed through the use of game mechanics that reduce cognitive load.

63. Picking Sides: How Genes Help Us
Decide Between Left and Right
It may surprise you that left-handed women
were found to be twice or more likely to
develop premenopausal breast cancer than
right-handers.
And a few researchers believe this effect may
be linked to exposure to certain chemicals in
utero, affecting your genes and then setting
the stage for both left-handedness and cancer
susceptibility, thus opening up another
probability of nurture changing nature.
So why the predominance of righties? For our species, one of the most
important tasks is communication, which is generally processed on the
left side of the brain.
And some scientists think that’s the reason why we’re right-side
dominant, because, as you’ve probably heard, the left side of the brain
generally controls the muscles on the right side of the body (which is
why a stroke suffered on the left side of your brain is more likely to
result in impairment to the arm and leg on the right side of the body).
Discovering more of the biology behind handedness, tracing it to
genetics, exposures, or both, could give us a lot more knowledge than
simply whether we should line up our kids on the left or right side of the
tee-ball batter’s box.
That’s because left-handedness has also been associated with higher
rates of dyslexia, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,
some mood disorders, and, as we’ve discussed, even cancer.
Indeed, adding handedness into the mix has helped Danish researchers
identify which children who had symptoms of ADHD at the age of eight
(when, let’s face it, just about every kid is a little bit on the rambunctious
side) would still have it at the age of 16.

64. Can You Control Your Metabolism With Your Mind?
Crum designed an experiment to investigate the link between what we think we're eating, how full we feel and how our
bodies respond. First, she made some milkshakes. Then, she labeled each shake as either "Sensishake: Fat Free, Guilt
Free, 104 Calories" or "Indulgence: Decadence You Deserve, 620 Calories." In reality, all the shakes were around 300
calories. Test subjects were asked to drink the milkshakes while nurses monitored their blood levels of ghrelin, a
hormone that increases with hunger, decreases after a meal, and affects the rate of our metabolism.
"Crum discovered that those who believed they were drinking the indulgent shake responded as if their bodies had
eaten three times more," explains Spiegel. "So what people believed about their milkshake came true. If they thought it
was fattening, they felt they'd eaten more and their digestion was affected. Their ghrelin levels dropped three times
more."
As the NPR video points out, Crum's findings suggest that while it may not matter as much as what we eat, how we
think about what we eat could play a significant role in how our bodies process food. There's obviously something very
appealing about that, but it warrants a good measure of skepticism. For one thing, Crum's study apparently lacked a
control group – that is, a group of test subjects who were not intentionally deceived with either rhetoric or calorie
counts.

65. Extract Money From People Using the Ambiguity Effect
Here's a quick game. I have a jar full of ninety marbles. There are thirty red marbles for sure, but there's a mix of black
and white marbles, and I can't be sure how many of each is in there. You can choose between one of two games. The
first game awards you a hundred dollars if you pick a red marble. The second game forces you to pick either black or
white as the "winning color," and awards you a hundred dollars if you pick the marble of your choice.
Most people will pick the red marble game. Knowing their exact odds of winning comforts them. They even pick the
red game if it's explained to them that the games have an equal probability of winning them the hundred bucks. To
see why the black and white game wins, let's change the game slightly. Instead of picking which marble color wins
before you draw, you draw and then flip a coin to see which color wins. So if you've just drawn a black marble, the
odds of winning with that marble are fifty percent - the likelihood of either side of a coin flip. And if you've just drawn
a white marble, the odds of winning with that marble are fifty percent. Considering the overall odds of drawing either
black or white are two-thirds, fifty percent of two thirds is one third - or exactly the odds of winning with a red marble.
Why is this important? Because of their dislike of uncertainty, people will pay to move from an uncertain game to a
more certain one. So you can either charge slightly more money for the red marble game, or work the crowd with a
partner. People get assigned on game or the other, and your partner, with the more-desirable red marble game will
trade their tickets for a cash bonus to people who don't like their odds (even though they should).

66. Continuity fields, and why we miss subtle visual changes
Continuity fields: Even when we fix our gaze on
something, our eyes are actually shifting microscopically
several times per second
Our eyes are continuously bombarded by visual
information – millions of colors, shapes and ever-changing
motion – yet seeing never feels like work.
Researchers have discovered one reason: our brains
perform automatic visual smoothing over time.
A study has found that our visual perception of things
is influenced by what we saw up to 15 seconds ago.
This helps create a stable environment, despite
sacrificing some accuracy.
It also means that what you see around you – that cup
of coffee, the face of your co-worker, your computer
screen – may be a time-averaged composite of now
and the past.
Fischer, who did the work as a doctoral student in the lab of
visual scientist David Whitney, calls this filter a continuity field.
For a real-world example of the phenomenon, think of a road
sign on a rainy day.
Despite the motion of hundreds of raindrops – and your retinas
being flooded with visual fluctuations – you don't have to
struggle too hard to read the sign. Your visual system is
averaging over what is effectively noise.
Fischer and Whitney also found that the filter seems to come into
play only when we need it. Attention matters – past images had
an influence if the subjects were paying attention to them, but
not if they were peripheral or in a radically different location. And
predictably, the influence of older images lessened the more time
passed.
Continuity fields are one type of visual insensitivity, but there are
others. Take the failure to notice an obvious change, known as
change blindness. One study had an experimenter ask a
pedestrian for directions. Their conversation was then
interrupted by a group of men walking between the two speakers
and carrying a large, obstructive object. Behind that object, out of
sight of the pedestrian, the initial experimenter was replaced by a
different person.
Despite the conversation partner being the central object in the
scene, only half of pedestrians noticed the change. The rest
continued giving directions as if nothing strange had happened.

67. Continuity fields, and why we miss
subtle visual changes
"We're not very good at detecting changes in our environment if the object is something we wouldn't expect to
change," Johnson said. In the real world, we wouldn't think a person we're talking to would spontaneously
transform. Thus, our brains often don't waste energy trying to notice these types of shifts.
Fischer suspects that our brains learn that the world follows certain rules – objects don't change location
spontaneously, and little changes don't matter most of the time – and adaptation of the visual system follows suit.
Visual scientist Michele Rucci of Boston University, not involved in the study, was surprised and intrigued by the
existence of continuity fields.
"We have this input to our retina that is continuously jumping, but yet the world seems stable," Rucci said. He noted
that, even when we fix our gaze on something, our eyes are actually shifting microscopically several times per
second. "Our perception of the world is very different than what the real input to the retina is."

68. Change Blindness
Change blindness is a surprising perceptual phenomenon that
occurs when a change in a visual stimulus is introduced and
the observer does not notice it.
For example, observers often fail to notice major differences
introduced into an image while it flickers off and on again.
People's poor ability to detect changes has been argued to
reflect fundamental limitations of human attention.
Change blindness has become a highly researched topic and
some have argued that it may have important practical
implications in areas such as eyewitness testimony and
distractions while driving.
Additionally, further research stated that rather large changes will not be detected when they occur during saccadic movements of the eye.
Another finding based on similar studies stated that a change was easily picked up on by participants when the eye was fixated on the point
of change.[7] Therefore, the eye must be directly fixated on the area of change for it to be noticed.
However, other research in the mid-1990s has indicated that individuals still have difficulty detecting change even when they are directly
fixated on a particular scene. A study by Rensink, O’Regan, & Clarke demonstrated that change blindness can have an effect even if the eye
was fixated on a scene. In this study, a picture was presented followed by a blank screen or “masking” stimulus, which was followed by the
initial picture with a change.
The masking stimulus almost acts like a saccadic movement of the eye which makes it significantly more difficult for individuals to detect the
change.[6] This was a critical contribution to change blindness research because it demonstrated that a change can remain unnoticed with
the smallest disruptions.
Research on change blindness proceeded one step further into practical applications of this phenomenon. For example, there does not have
to be a masking stimulus in order for individuals to miss a change in a scene. Individuals often take significantly longer to notice certain
changes if there are a few small, high contrast shapes that are temporarily splattered over a picture.[8] This method for testing change
blindness is called “mudsplashes”.[8] This method is particularly relevant to individuals driving in a car when there is a visual obstruction on
the windshield. This obstruction may impair an individual’s ability to detect a change in their environment which could result in severe
negative consequences while driving.

69. Study proves that talking on your cell
phone makes you act like an a**hole.
Use of a cell phone reduces attention and increases
response times. 62 people (30 men, 32 women) were
confronted with a confederate wearing a large leg
brace, who dropped a stack of magazines and feigned
difficulty retrieving them.
Among the 33 people who talked on their cell phones
only 9% offered their help, whereas among the 29
people who did not talk on their cell phones, 72%
offered help.
The use of cell phones affects helping behavior.

70. Why overheard cell phone
conversations are extra annoying.
Overhearing someone on a cell phone means hearing only half of a conversation–a “halfalogue.” We show that merely
overhearing a halfalogue results in decreased performance on cognitive tasks designed to reflect the attentional demands
of daily activities.
By contrast, overhearing both sides of a cell-phone conversation or a monologue does not result in decreased
performance.
This may be because the content of a halfalogue is less predictable than both sides of a conversation. In a second
experiment, we controlled for differences in acoustic factors between these types of overheard speech, establishing that it
is the unpredictable informational content of halfalogues that results in distraction.
Thus, we provide a cognitive explanation for why overheard cell-phone conversations are especially irritating: Less-predictable
speech results in more distraction for a listener engaged in other tasks.”

71. Need to Commit Something to
Memory? Sleep On It
Almost a century after scientists first began studying
sleep, it’s clear that getting some z‘s is useful for far
more than resting our bodies; it’s also necessary for
retaining short- and long-term memories.
These new findings could have important
implications for everything from education to
overcoming phobias, Deikelmann said.
Remember staying up all night cramming for that statistics test in college? Turns out you
probably would have scored higher if you had closed the books and hit the hay.
A series of recent studies, some of which were presented at this week’s annual meeting
of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, suggest that a good night’s sleep doesn’t just
make you feel more rested – it’s also crucial for remembering everything from test
answers to when to mail your mother’s birthday card.

72. You can't tell if someone is lying by
reading their facial expressions
Microexpressions, as defined by psychologist Paul Ekman (who coined the term "microexpression,"
basically wrote the book on the little bastards, and has been studying their use in detecting deception for
going on half a century, now), are:
...very brief facial expressions, lasting between 1/25th and 1/15th of a second. They occur when a person
either deliberately or unconsciously conceals an emotion being felt. Any one of the seven emotions found
to have a universal signal may appear in a micro expression: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, contempt,
surprise and happiness.
Microexpressions therefore fall under the umbrella of "body language" ("nonverbals," if you're one for
parlance), and are distinguishable in that they refer explicitly to the face and specific situations in which
they're likely to appear, viz. a situation where the emotion being felt is being either intentionally or
unintentionally suppressed.

73. How Does "Valence" Help Your Brain Distinguish
Between Good And Bad?
Valence is the term used for the spectrum of emotions from extremely
positive to extremely negative.
When it comes to arousal — the intensity of an emotion — neuroscience
indicates that valence might be less important than we think. The
amygdala is the part of the brain that processes emotions.
Turns out, the amygdala gets engaged based on arousal. The feeling can be negative or it can be positive. Whether a
person is shown a picture of snuggling kittens or a severed hand, the amygdala responds.
But it isn't the only part of the brain that responds. The prefrontal cortex is a part of the brain we really don't want to
lose, as it deals with planning and problem-solving, and any injury to the region is devastating. It turns out, this area of
the brain might also tell you whether you feel good or bad.
Different areas of the prefrontal cortex get going when different stimuli are presented. The areas are scattered, but there
are distinct sections that distinguish between what you feel when you get a free plane ticket to Costa Rica and what you
feel when you get there and a spider drops from a tree onto your face. Although it's your amygdala that tells you that
both events were thrilling, it's your prefrontal cortex that tells you which one you wouldn't care to repeat.

74. The Psychological Effect That Explains
Why You Suck at Parties
It doesn't just take a good brain to memorize names. It
takes time and attention, neither of which you have in
that situation.
As each person is listed, we are waiting for the next
person's name. This provokes what's known as the
next-in-line effect.
The next-in-line effect happens when someone is waiting for
their turn to speak during an organized event.
Researchers tested it by having people in small, circular groups
take turns giving out information, then testing them to see
which snippets of information they remembered.
Each participant's memory was just fine, right up until they got
to the information imparted by the person who talked just
before they themselves were "up."
Suddenly, they remembered nothing. Yes, they were listening
when the person before them was talking. They just weren't
paying attention. Their mind was already on the next task.
When we see a group of people coming towards us with their
hands out for handshakes, we're in a situation in which we
know we'll have to take in a cascade of information, and we try
to prepare for it.
This is exactly the wrong thing to do. We try to simultaneously
greet the person in front of us, and get ready for the next
person in line.
As it turns out, we can either take in and store information, or
get ready for the next grouping of information. Since we try to
do two things at once, we fail at both.