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Most people, not surprisingly, said they would like to see the higher-rated movie. But intriguingly, just the opposite was true for those who scored on the lonely end of the loneliness scale: lonely participants actually favored the 2.5-star film.

Why would that be? The Netflix study was inconclusive, Shiv says, because 2.5 stars can mean quite different things. It's possible that a movie earned that average because it's loved by a significant minority, in the way of a cult film; but it could simply be a mediocre movie, rated below average by just about everyone. Shiv and his colleagues ran more experiments and found results that matched the first interpretation. "People who are not lonely prefer to go with the majority, whereas people who are lonely prefer to go with the minority," he says.

For example, in one study, students had to choose a piece of artwork after being told either that 80% of past buyers liked this artist's work or that 20% of buyers liked it. The lonely students (and only the lonely) went along with the 20%.

The research involved 96 male 103 female undergraduates, who were put through a "speed-meeting" exercise -- talking for three minutes to each of five potential opposite-sex mates. Before the conversations, the participants rated themselves on their own attractiveness and were assessed for the level of their desire for a short-term sexual encounter. After each "meeting," they rated the partner on a number of measures, including physical attractiveness and sexual interest in the participant. The model had the advantage of testing the participants in multiple interactions.

The results: Men looking for a quick hookup were more likely to overestimate the women's desire for them. Men who thought they were hot also thought the women were hot for them -- but men who were actually attractive, by the women's ratings, did not make this mistake. The more attractive the woman was to the man, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest. And women tended to underestimate men's desire.

A hopeless mess? Evolutionarily speaking, maybe not, say the psychologists. Over millennia, these errors may in fact have enhanced men's reproductive success.

Managers who underwent training saw their charisma ratings significantly grow, relative to those who didn't.

What are the techniques that make someone more charismatic?

-framing through metaphor

-stories and anecdotes

-demonstrating moral conviction

-sharing the sentiments of the collective

-setting high expectations

-communicating confidence

-using rhetorical devices such as contrasts, lists, and rhetorical questions

together with non-verbal tactics such as body gesture, facial expression, and animated voice tone.

But be careful; as always with something as subtle as charisma, training and practice are important in order to achieve proper execution

A good sense of humor is sexually attractive, perhaps because it reveals intelligence, creativity, and other ‘good genes’ or ‘good parent’ traits. If so, intelligence should predict humor production ability, which in turn should predict mating success. In this study, 400 university students (200 men and 200 women) completed measures of abstract reasoning (Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices), verbal intelligence (the vocabulary subtest of the Multidimensional Aptitude Battery), humor production ability (rated funniness of captions written for three cartoons), and mating success (from the Sexual Behaviors and Beliefs Questionnaire). Structural equation models showed that general and verbal intelligence both predict humor production ability, which in turn predicts mating success, such as lifetime number of sexual partners. Also, males showed higher average humor production ability. These results suggest that the human sense of humor evolved at least partly through sexual selection as an intelligence-indicator.

Research highlights

► Test if a humor is an intelligence indicator that translates into mating success.

► On average, males were funnier than women.

► Humor mediates the effect of intelligence on mating success for both sexes.

Source: "Humor ability reveals intelligence, predicts mating success, and is higher in males" from Intelligence

Social-media agency SocialCode is the latest firm to try to calculate the value of a Facebook fan as part of a new study. Their verdict: about $10 per "fan," assuming a constant cost-per-click of $1.

The literature on rational versus affective advertising is very long and mostly inconclusive. Some studies suggest we care more about rational ads for things we need, like medicine, and are more receptive to emotional ads for things we simply want, like clothes. But another study by Aimee Drolet & Patti Williams & Loraine Lau-Gesk showed that, whereas younger consumers prefer emotional ads for "hedonic" products (beer and cologne) and fact-based ads for "utilitarian" products (pain relievers and investment plans), older consumers prefer affective ads for just about everything.

If this sounds basically intuitive, then good. Ads are supposed to play on our intuition, our conscious and subconscious desires. The Freudian theory everybody is driven by powerful sex urges has long been popular with advertisers (and those who advise them), so we see a lot of ads that obliquely use sex to sell just about anything, from cars to Coke.

The most successful ads -- in the eyes of advertisers at least -- have broad emotional and cognitive appeal. They target aspiration, persuasion, and emotion -- what Warren labels ethos, logos, and pathos.

Für viele Personen sind Kratzgeräusche eine akustische Qual. Christoph Reuter, Professor für Systematische Musikwissenschaft an der Universität Wien, untersuchte mit seinem Kollegen Michael Oehler aus Köln, warum wir so sensibel auf Wandtafelkratz- und Kreidegeräusche reagieren. Die Ergebnisse: Die An- oder Abwesenheit von Geräuschanteilen oder Modulationen hatte so gut wie keinen Einfluss auf die Klangbewertung. Dafür trug die starke Präsenz einer Tonhöhe entscheidend zur empfundenen Abneigung gegenüber den Geräuschen bei. Fehlten die Tonhöheninformationen, wurden die Wandtafelkratz- und Kreidegeräusche als sehr viel angenehmer eingestuft. "Dieser Effekt ist bei Frequenzen zwischen 2000 und 4000 Hz noch wesentlich stärker. Frequenzanteile in diesem Bereich fallen in die Eigenresonanz unseres Außenohrkanals, wodurch sie besonders gut bzw. in diesem Falle besonders unangenehm übertragen werden", so Christoph Reuter abschließend.

Wer in einer glücklichen Partnerschaft lebt, neigt eher zum Dickwerden als Singles. Ursache dafür ist unter anderem der Konkurrenzdruck auf dem Partnermarkt, wie eine Untersuchung am Max-Weber-Institut für Soziologie der Universität Heidelberg zeigt: „Wenn die Konkurrenz bei der Partnersuche hoch ist, achten Singles eher auf ihr Gewicht, um attraktiver zu sein“, erklärt Prof. Dr. Thomas Klein. „Bei weniger Konkurrenz sind die Gewichtsunterschiede zwischen Singles und Menschen in einer Partnerschaft geringer.“ Ähnlichkeiten beim Gewicht, die bei Paaren sehr häufig vorkommen, gehen nach Erkenntnis des Heidelberger Soziologen nicht auf Anpassungsprozesse während der Partnerschaft zurück, sondern beruhen darauf, dass bei der Partnerwahl Menschen mit ähnlichem Gewicht bevorzugt werden.

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Repeated measures ANOVA indicated that the disclosure intervention impacted wound healing. Participants who wrote about traumatic events had significantly smaller wounds 14 and 21 days after the biopsy compared with those who wrote about time management.

Job applicants are taught to project confidence in interviews, but can overconfidence trip them up and put off employers? For this research participants read application materials to join a competitive swim team in one study, and apply for employment in another. Both studies featured two applicants, one overconfident, and the other more modest. Other participants were introduced to make the hiring decision at two points once immediately after reading the applicants’ self-descriptions, and again after information that revealed over-confidence or over-modesty on the part of the applicants. Other participants introduced to make the hiring decision were asked to make a choice at two points, once immediately after reading the applicants’ self-descriptions, and again after information that revealed over-confidence or over-modesty on the part of the applicants. When they had little information but the self-description of the applicants, they overwhelmingly preferred the confident candidate. But then raters obtained new information that revealed the exaggerations of the overconfident applicant, and the rather gentle modesty of the other applicant. In both experiments, there was a significant shift away from the overconfident toward the modest applicant. Whilst the authors recognize that sometimes overconfidence is helpful—positive illusions about one’s self can contribute to mental and physical health and success at school and finding work. But when overly positive beliefs about one’s abilities meet up with reality, one can lose the respect of others. Positive illusions might be good only when others also believe that the illusions are true.

Basically, we have the anecdotes that support this myth well in hand: countless Governors, Presidents, and Senators have engaged in immoral and unlawful action, and it is easy to believe, based on this evidence that power is a special corrupting force that renders even the most saintly of men into a sinner.

This simply isn't true when put up to the lens of empirical investigation. One classic studies comes to mind: In 2001, Professor Serena Chen and her colleagues examined how selfish v. selfless individuals would behave when put in positions of power. Chen and colleagues gave participants in their experiment control over resources and punishments of another individual (or not) and then measured aspects of their personality. The personality measure assessed the extent the participant tended to be communal-- a selfless sharer of goods, favors, and resources-- or exchange oriented-- a selfish calculator of what one is owed by others. Participants were then given an opportunity to help another participant during the experiment. The results were definitive: selfish powerholders were selfish during the experiment, failing to help their partner during the experiment. Selfless powerholders on the other hand, actually continued to be selfless and helpful even when they were given power. The moral of this story: Power doesn't corrupt everyone. 

Does the extent to which people are smiling in their Facebook photos predict future life satisfaction? In two longitudinal studies, the authors showed that smile intensity coded from a single Facebook profile photograph from male and female participants’ first semester at college was a robust predictor of self-reported life satisfaction 3.5 years later—as they were about to graduate from college. Controlling for first-semester life satisfaction, the authors also determined that smile intensity was a unique predictor of changes in life satisfaction over time. In addition, the authors demonstrated that the results were not due to extraversion or to sex differences in smile intensity. Finally, the authors showed that participants who exhibited a more intense smile in their Facebook photo had better social relationships during their first semester at college and that the association between smile intensity and life satisfaction 3.5 years later was partially mediated by first-semester social relationships satisfaction.

The second study, of 298 people, built from the first and added the factors of risk attraction, impulsivity, driving as a hedonistic activity and perceptions about time pressures.

The studies found:

• People who perceive their car as a reflection of their self-identity are more likely to behave aggressively on the road and break the law.
• People with compulsive tendencies are more likely to drive aggressively with disregard for potential consequences.
• Increased materialism, or the importance of one’s possessions, is linked to increased aggressive driving tendencies.
• Young people who are in the early stages of forming their self-identity might feel the need to show off their car and driving skills more than others. They may also be overconfident and underestimate the risks involved in reckless driving.
• Those who admit to aggressive driving also admit to engaging in more incidents of breaking the law.
• A sense of being under time and pressure leads to more aggressive driving.

Researchers believe the study suggests “ that the perception of the car as an extension of the self leads to more aggressive behavior on the road rather than increased driving cautiousness.”

Women were found to spend significantly more time on Facebook: 40.57 minutes a day, versus 29.83 minutes a day for men. The study did find that when people use more Facebook, they have higher levels of jealousy (women even more so than men). What does this mean for us?

I think this study is incredibly important for users of Facebook because it highlights an underlying issue for the Facebook generation: Facebook causes FOMO. FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out. It is in human nature to always assume others are having more fun or a better life than we are. Facebook, where you are supposedly surrounded by all of your friends can actually be incredibly lonely. You look at others and what they are doing and feel that they are having more of a life than you (because at that moment it looks like they are doing something fun and you are only looking at them on Facebook). It is a set-up for jealousy and hard feelings.

Exercise is the key, say the researchers. And it appears that the intensity of the exercise regimen may be more important than its duration.

The new study shows that by increasing the intensity of your exercise, you can beat back the risk of metabolic syndrome, the troublesome set of risk factors that can predispose people to type 2 diabetes, stroke and cardiovascular problems.

“Physical condition is the most important factor in describing an individual’s overall health, almost like a report card,” says Stian Thoresen Aspenes, who conducted the research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) K.G. Jebsen Center of Exercise in Medicine.

The new study used information from 4,631 healthy men and women from Norway’s biggest health database, the Nord Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT) to examine fitness in adults from all age classes.

However, some research reveals that despite these general deficits, people may actually become happier as they age. Specifically, emotion regulation skills may improve with age, leading to decreasing negative affect, and more stable positive affect.

In general, older adults may have an increasing sense of life-satisfaction, and be able to regulate their emotions more effectively than younger adults, allowing them to experience longer-lasting positive emotions and more fleeting negative moods.

The way older adults process information has been shown to be different from young adults, as they tend to pay attention to more positive information and tend to recall more positive memories.

This has been termed the positivity effect and relates to the tendency for older adults to pay more attention to, better remember, and put more priority on positive information than on negative information.