Fact O' The Day

[Krandall]

"Posture influences how qualified you consider yourself."


An Ohio State study told respondents that they'd be participating in two studies, one for the arts school and one for the business school. The arts study, they were told, gauged posture's influence on other activities. They were then seated upright, slouching forward or slouching dramatically downward, as they participated in a business study on professional performance. Students sitting up straight were much more confident about their own self-analyses while students in the slumped-over position seemed unconvinced by their own thoughts, and their self-analyses were insincere and doubtful.

[Krandall]

"For some men, confrontational stare-downs are instinctual behavior."


A Dutch study gave participants a questionnaire about their behavior in social situations and then instructed them to watch a computer screen and shift their focus between areas on the screen. Unbeknown to the participants, a face briefly flashed on the screen while they were doing so, displaying an angry, happy or neutral expression. In this laboratory setting, with no logical reason to be confrontational, people who self-identified as being dominant in social situations took longer to look away from the angry face than their counterparts did. Similarly, people who identified themselves as reward seeking took longer to look away from the happy expression.


interesting.

[Krandall]

"Gmail is the e-mail domain of choice among men aged 18 to 35."


Recommendation engine Hunch.com asked its users a series of questions about their demographics and personalities, then organized their responses into broad categories based on their e-mail addresses. The divisions between the top four major e-mail domains were stark. The typical Gmail user is a thin young man, college-educated and single. Hotmail users are most likely to be young women who live in the suburbs. Yahoo! users tend to be women aged 18 to 49, family-oriented and with children. AOL users tend to be overweight women aged 35 to 64, characterized as "optimistic extroverts."

page 69 woot!

[Krandall]

"Human aging patterns are similar to those of wild primates."


The rate at which the likelihood of human death increases with age is often generally assumed to be slower than that of wild animals. However, new research indicates that "human patterns are not strikingly different." The mortality rate of wild primates, like chimps and gorillas, is comparable to that of humans -- despite the safety and convenience that characterize human society, and the numerous risks wild animals face. Additionally, in both cases, males tend to die sooner than females. The smallest difference in male/female rates was found among the muriquis, monkeys that also happen to have the least male-male aggression.

[Krandall]

"New fathers can experience postpartum depression just as new mothers can."


Postpartum depression, which affects up to 15% of women who have given birth, also manifests itself in men, and can significantly influence their behavior. A University of Michigan study found that 7% of new fathers experience major depression (although its cause was not necessarily due to fatherhood), and that fathers who experienced depression were more than three times as likely to spank their children.

[Peelz]

totally true

[rappyfreak]

totally true

So you're a kid spanking depression ridden dad? 

[Peelz]

totally true

So you're a kid spanking depression ridden dad? 

L-O-L

[dragonz]

totally true

So you're a kid spanking depression ridden dad? 

L-O-L

well thats probably better than being a monkey spanking depression ridden wannabe..............

[rappyfreak]

you?

[dragonz]

you?

I'm no wannabe.................

[Krandall]

"Optimists die younger."


Researchers for the Longevity Project, which has been conducted continuously since 1921, started off studying 1,500 children and eventually concluded that the most cheerful kids had shorter lives overall than those who were less cheerful. A likely explanation is that cheerful people are more likely to take potentially life-shortening risks. Howard Friedman, the leader of the study's research teams, explained that whimsical optimism "can lead one to be careless about things that are important to health and long life," especially when compared to the lifelong behaviors of someone more cautious and reserved.

[dragonz]

Live hard, die young, & leave a good looking corpse
(some dead bloke)

[Krandall]

"Financial risk-taking is just as common in men with low levels of testosterone."


Some risk-taking is associated with high testosterone -- evidenced, for example, by the disproportionately risky behavior shown by men with spiking hormones (particularly those aged 18 to 24). But the likelihood of risk-taking is not necessarily that straightforward according to the authors of a new Duke University study. Testosterone's relationship to risk-taking has a U-shaped, rather than a linear, correlation. The study found that the people likeliest to gamble on a small financial risk were those with either the highest or lowest levels of testosterone for their gender (men and women included).

[Krandall]

"People who watch more television are less happy overall."


The 30-year General Social Survey concluded that happier people tend to be socially active, and that unhappier people tend to watch TV (the actual act of watching TV was identified as pleasurable and positive in the short term, but correlated with unhappiness in the long term). The contradiction between the short-term and long-term effects of TV could have to do with the way it influences a person's worldview. Before his death in 2005, communications theorist George Gerbner argued that television gives people a false image of the world -- that its sensationalism makes people unconsciously believe, and therefore act, as though the world is worse than it actually is. He called this "Mean World Syndrome."