Red seems to affect us in a way that other colors don’t. (…)

Johns and colleagues test an hypothesis for why red on women looks so attractive to me. The hypothesis is that red is sexy because it reminds men of… lady parts. (…) One version of the hypothesis is that as females are approaching ovulation, the vulva becomes more red than is is at other points in the cycle.

If this “red is code for female sex organs” hypothesis is true, you might predict that men would judge female genitals as more attractive as they became more red.

Explicit images of anatomically normal, un-retouched, nonpornographic, similarly-orientated female genitals were surprisingly difficult to obtain… We selected photographs that … did not contain other, potentially distracting, objects (fingers, sex toys, piercings etc.) and were hairless to account for current fashion.

They showed their pictures to 40 males. Most of the men were in their 20s. (…) They rated the attractiveness of each image.

The ratings of attractiveness were the exact opposite of those predicted by the signalling hypothesis. The reddest images were rated the least attractive.

The authors are then tasked to come up with an hypothesis as to why redness is less attractive. Their suggestion is that red is suggestive of menstrual blood.

{ NeuroDojo | Continue reading }

The researchers in charge of performing psychometric testing recently made an interesting observation: if they wear a white coat when interacting with the participants (and their parents), they receive more respect.

According to a study by Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky of Norwestern University, it’s possible that our psych testers not only look more professional, but subconsciously feel more professional. In other words, the clothes may literally make the man (or woman).

{ Gaines, on brains | Continue reading }

images { 1 | 2 }

{ When the authorities send a subpoena to Facebook for your account information, what do they receive? }

related:

This paper reports a study which investigated adult social activity on Facebook. The data was drawn from an online survey (N = 758) and 18 in-depth research sessions (semistructured interviews and verbal protocols). The research explored the function of Facebook in making contact, maintaining contact and facilitating extended contact with online friends and the concept of ‘facestalking’. It also examined how the specific tools of Facebook (wall postings, status updates, events and photos) are used to communicate and socialise. The research concludes that Facebook strengthens existing friendships by supplementing traditional forms of communication (face to face, telephone). Also, participation in the Facebook community enables efficient and convenient contact to be maintained with a larger and more diverse group of acquaintances, thus extending potential social capital.

{ IJETS | Continue reading }

A Wall Street Journal examination of 100 of the most popular Facebook apps found that some seek the email addresses, current location and sexual preference, among other details, not only of app users but also of their Facebook friends. One Yahoo service powered by Facebook requests access to a person’s religious and political leanings as a condition for using it. The popular Skype service for making online phone calls seeks the Facebook photos and birthdays of its users and their friends. (…)

Facebook requires apps to ask permission before accessing a user’s personal details. However, a user’s friends aren’t notified if information about them is used by a friend’s app. An examination of the apps’ activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn’t enforcing its own rules on data privacy.

{ WSJ | Continue reading }

There is no shortage of advice on how to recover from a bad break-up: keep busy, don’t contact your ex, go out with friends. (…) But according to a new study, something important is missing from this list. (…)

“It is just something that happens these days.” (…) This statement expresses a sense of common humanity, or recognition that suffering is part of the human experience, which is considered a fundamental part of self-compassion. (…)

“It was all my fault. (…) I know I did it all wrong.” In contrast to the first statement, this one includes a high degree of self-judgment, with no evidence of self-kindness. (…)

Results indicated that participants who were judged to be higher in self-compassion showed less distress at the beginning of the study and at the nine-month mark, while those low in self-compassion showed a greater increase in distress between six and nine months.

{ Psych Your Mind | Continue reading }

photo { Sam Haskins }

What would we do if we encountered an alien race? As it turns out, the question has garnered considerable academic thought since the first reported flying saucer sighting in 1947, not just as an inquiry in human psychology, but also as a way of contemplating what aliens might do if they ever found us. From astronomers to ufologists to anthropologists, scholars who have contemplated the various “contact scenarios” believe our course of action would strongly depend on the relative intelligence level of the newfound beings. Here, we outline what would happen if we encountered primitive, humanlike, and godlike aliens. (…)

In 1950 the U.S. military developed a procedure called “Seven Steps to Contact,” laying out the logical steps we would take upon discovering creatures with roughly human-level sentience. According to the steps, we would begin with remote surveillance and data gathering, and would eventually move on to covert visitations with the goal of gauging the performance characteristics of the aliens’ vehicles and weaponry.

{ LiveScience | Continue reading }

related { Alien Abductions May Be Vivid Dreams, Study Shows }

photo { Laerke Posselt }

Family income is associated with student achievement, but careful studies show little causal connection.  School factors – teacher quality, school accountability, school choice – have bigger causal impacts than family income per se, according to a new analysis by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG).

{ EducationNext | Continue reading }

Conventional wisdom tells us that in the business world, “you are who you know” — your social background and professional networks outweigh talent when it comes to career success.

But according to a Tel Aviv University researcher, making the right connection only gets your foot in the door. Your future success is entirely up to you. (…)

When intelligence and socio-economic background are pitted directly against one another, intelligence is a more accurate predictor of future career success, he asserts.

{ American Friends of Tel Aviv University | Continue reading }

Love is an alien invasion coordinated with sleeper cell revolts. Someone penetrates you and leaves behind a colony that allows the monster inside them to ventriloquize your thoughts. It’s the opportunity that that part of us which cries out to be dominated and longs to be victimized has been waiting for ever since we were born. Everyone knows the best scene in The Manchurian Candidate is the one where Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh meet on the train. It captures the indistinguishabilty of love from brainwashing, even and especially at its inception. Love is a cancer. You can’t just cut it out. You have to poison your whole body to beat it, kill yourself just enough to keep on living. Love is White Power. Love is Vichy France.

–-Rick Santorum, National Association of Women Against Women, inaugural address

{ If you can read this you’re lying | Continue reading }

painting { Jules Lefebvre, Odalisque, 1874 }

This new research provides a terrific reference list of prior work done on women stalkers and reports a high rate of psychosis among women stalkers. Delusions are the most common symptom in two of the three major studies completed so far. Half of the women stalkers described in prior research had character disorders and women were more likely than men to target a former professional contact (like mental health professionals, teachers or lawyers). It appears that male stalkers are less particular, and more likely to target strangers. Women stalkers seek intimacy.

{ Keen Trial | Continue reading }

photo { Taylor Radelia }

We have all had arguments. Occasionally these reach an agreed upon conclusion but usually the parties involved either agree to disagree or end up thinking the other party hopelessly stupid, ignorant or irrationally stubborn. Very rarely do people consider the possibility that it is they who are ignorant, stupid, irrational or stubborn even when they have good reason to believe that the other party is at least as intelligent or educated as themselves.

Sometimes the argument was about something factual where the facts could be easily checked e.g. who won a certain football match in 1966.

Sometimes the facts aren’t so easily checked because they are difficult to understand but the problem is clear and objective. (…)

Sometimes the facts aren’t as mathematical or logical as the Monty Hall solution. Each party to the argument appeals to ‘facts’ which the other party disputes. (…)

Sometimes the arguments boil down to differences in values. For example, what tastes better chocolate or vanilla ice cream, or who is prettier Jane or Mary? In these cases there isn’t really a correct answer – even when a large majority favors a particular alternative. Values also have a strong way of influencing what people accept as evidence or indeed what they perceive at all.

The interesting thing is that when the disagreement isn’t a pure values difference it should always be possible to reach agreement.

{ Garth Zietsman | Continue reading }

University of Alberta study explores women’s experiences of public change rooms and locker rooms; finds many don’t relish the experience of being naked in front of others.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

In recent years, a small number of researchers have been working to develop the science of post-coitus.

{ Salon | Continue reading }

It is well known that in theory and in reality people cooperate more when then expect to interact over more repetitions, and when they care more about the future.

{ Overcoming Bias | Continue reading }

unrelated { Self-Piercing at Thailand Vegetarian Festival }

In one experiment, just telling a man he would be observed by a female was enough to hurt his psychological performance.

{ Scientific American | Continue reading }

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Although female orgasms were reportedly most commonly experienced during foreplay, their vocalizations were reported to occur most frequently before and simultaneous with male ejaculation. So basically the women’s sex noises most frequently accompanied their partner’s orgasm. Why? It turns out, it’s because they wanted to help their partners out. Sixty-six percent reported making noise to accelerate their partner’s ejaculation. Ninety-two percent believed these vocalizations upped their partner’s self-esteem (87 percent reported vocalizing for this purpose). Other reported reasons included speeding things up, “to relieve discomfort/pain, boredom, and fatigue in equal proportion, as well as because of time limitations.”

{ Salon | Continue reading }

photo { Johan Renck }

Japanese researchers build a gun capable of stopping speakers in mid-sentence.

{ The Physics arXiv Blog | full story }

Having adequate personal space is an important aspect of users’ comfort with their environment. In a restaurant, for instance, spatial intrusion by others can lead to avoidance responses such as early departure or a disinclination to spend.

A web-based survey of more than 1,000 Americans elicited behavioral intentions and emotional responses to a projected restaurant experience when parallel dining tables were spaced at six, twelve, and twenty-four inches apart under three common dining scenarios. Respondents strongly objected to closely spaced tables in most circumstances, particularly in a “romantic” context. Not only did the respondents react negatively to tightly spaced tables but they were generally disdainful of banquette- style seating, regardless of table distance.

The context of the dining experience (e.g., a business lunch, a family occasion) is likely to be a key factor in consumers’ preferences for table spacing and their subsequent behaviors. Gender was also a factor, as women were much less comfortable than men in tight quarters. The findings are clear but the implications for restaurateurs are not, because a tight table arrangement has been demonstrated to shorten the dining cycle without affecting spending.

{ SAGE | Continue reading }

image { Desiree Dolron }

related { Monsters, daemons, and devils: The Accusations of Nineteenth-Century Vegetarian Writers | PDF }

When people have positive experiences with members of another group, they tend to generalize these experiences from the group member to the group as a whole. This process of member-to-group generalization results in less prejudice against the group. Notably, however, researchers have tended to ignore what happens when people have negative experiences with group members.

In a recent article, my colleagues and I proposed that negative experiences have an opposite but stronger effect on people’s attitudes towards groups.

{ Mark Rubin | Continue reading }

It’s estimated that 1% of the world’s population is asexual, although research is limited. Annette and others like her have never and probably will never experience sexual attraction. She has been single her whole life, something she repeatedly says that she is more than happy about. (…)

Listen to asexual people talk about everyday life and you realise they face social minefields that don’t affect people of other sexualities. “Living in a world that holds the romantic and the sexual as the highest ideals possible is difficult,” says Bryony, a 20-year-old biology student from Manchester. “The most pervasive effect on my life at the moment, as a student, is how many conversations revolve around sex and the sexual attractiveness of certain people that I just don’t really want to join in with.”

{ The Guardian | Continue reading }

related { Some people never find the love of their lives. And live to tell about it. }

In this article we explore how online daters use technology to assess and manage the real and perceived risks associated with online dating. (…)

All participants believed that online dating was risky in some manner.

To manage these risks participants used technology in various ways: ways: to assist them in assessing authenticity and compatibility, to limit their self disclosure and exposure, to undertake surveillance of others and to control their online interactions. The participants made pragmatic use of the technologies available to them to minimise the risks, deploying risk management strategies throughout their online dating experiences.

{ International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society | Continue reading }

photo { Yoshihiro Tatsuki }

Every fall into love involves [to adapt Oscar Wilde] the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping that we will not find in the other what we know is in ourselves – all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise and brute stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one, and decide that everything that lies within it will somehow be free of our faults and hence loveable. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through union with the beloved, hope somehow to maintain [against evidence of all self-knowledge] a precarious faith in the species.

{ Alain de Botton | Continue reading }

artwork { Jeremy Geddesart }

I think that good sex can keep a relationship together, but can’t make it function at any sort of meaningful level. I feel that intimacy—i.e. kissing, cuddling, or any proximal form of contact—is way more important than sex.

Understand the realities: First, sex slows down when you have kids, in both frequency and intensity due to the physical and communicative demands the kids place on a relationship. I saw a couple once where the guy said that as newlyweds he and his wife would have sex everyday—anal, too—and it was so intense she was trying to fit his cock and balls in her mouth simultaneously. They had kids. He logged more hours at the office due to their financial needs; she was exhausted from taking care of the kids all day; they spent less time together, and sex dropped to once a week. (…)

I put a good sex life behind things like philosophical alignment in financial security, child discipline, trust, not allowing your insecurities to impose on your partner, job satisfaction, substance abuse, and most importantly, selflessness. (…)

The idea of two people changing together and—more importantly— accepting each others changes over a 50-year span is delusional unless that person is undeniably your best friend in the whole world. Ever.

{ Gawker | Continue reading }

What is romantic love? Can it last forever? This article considers how romantic love adapts in long term relationships. Recently some theorists proposed adaptive reasons for romantic love to endure, which contradicts a common idea that romantic love dwindles over time in exchange for companionship.

{ SAGE | Continue reading }

photo { Dioni Tabbers & Hana Jirickova photographed by Ellen Von Unwerth for Common & Sense }