Tag: Behavior

Pop quiz: Given a choice between indulgent and healthy foods, what will most people pick? The answer may depend on what other foods sit nearby on the grocery shelf, suggests new research from Duke University. Paradoxically, the nearby presence of an indulgent treat can cause more people to opt for a healthy food, said study

Academics at the University of Warwick have found that low functional connectivity of the lateral orbitofrontal cortex that is associated with the tendency to smoke is associated with increased impulsiveness — which may contribute to the tendency to smoke. The high connectivity of the reward-related medial orbitofrontal cortex in drinkers may increase the tendency to

Impulse online shopping, downloading music and compulsive email use are all signs of a certain personality trait that make you a target for malware attacks. New research from Michigan State University examines the behaviors — both obvious and subtle — that lead someone to fall victim to cybercrime involving Trojans, viruses, and malware. “People who

Here’s a new negotiating tactic: enjoy a family-style meal with your counterpart before making your opening bid. When people in a business negotiation share not just a meal but a plate, they collaborate better and reach deals faster, according to new research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. In the study, “Shared

A ‘brain training’ app developed at the University of Cambridge could help people who suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) manage their symptoms, which may typically include excessive handwashing and contamination fears. In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, Baland Jalal and Professor Barbara Sahakian from the Department of Psychiatry, show how just

Conventional wisdom holds that people set themselves up for even greater heartache when they jump into bed with their ex-partner after a breakup. However, according to the findings of a study in Springer’s journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, having sex with an ex doesn’t seem to hinder moving on after the breakup. This is true

Violent video game play by adolescents is associated with increases in physical aggression over time, according to a Dartmouth meta-analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Although most researchers on the subject agree that playing violent video games appears to increase physical aggression, a vocal minority continues to dispute this.

For most people, the sense of happiness derived from a luxurious vacation, a good movie or a tasty dinner at a restaurant may seem short-lived, but what if it were possible to extend these feelings of enjoyment? Researchers from the University of Minnesota and Texas A&M University decided to explore whether the way people frame

Scientists report they were unable to reproduce the results of a well-known study showing that people are less likely to cheat on a task after making a list of the Ten Commandments. Their findings are published in a Registered Replication Report (RRR) in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, a journal of the

Figuring out how to make articles and videos go viral is the holy grail for any content creator. Although a magic formula remains elusive, in recent years, neuroscientists have forecasted which content will go viral by showing it to a small number of people and observing their brain activity. Now, they’ve taken that research a

Why did they do that? It’s a question we ask every day in attempting to understand the behavior of others and make meaning of the world around us. How we answer the question, however, varies depending on our moral attitudes toward the behavior. In a paper appearing in the November 2018 issue of Cognition, Simon

The behavior of people who remain committed to a choice, even when it is clear that an alternate choice would be a better option, has been a perplexing phenomenon to psychologists and economists. For example, people will continue to wait in the slow line at a grocery store, stick out an unhealthy relationship, or refuse

Think you’re totally in control of your thoughts? Maybe not as much as you think, according to a new San Francisco State University study that examines how thoughts that lead to actions enter our consciousness. While we can “decide” to think about certain things, other information — including activities we have learned like counting —

Students who lived in dormitories without air conditioning (AC) during a heat wave performed worse on a series of cognitive tests compared with students who lived in air-conditioned dorms, according to new research led by Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health. The field study, the first to demonstrate the detrimental cognitive effects of indoor

Taking multivitamin and mineral supplements does not prevent heart attacks, strokes or cardiovascular death, according to a new analysis of 18 studies published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, an American Heart Association journal. “We meticulously evaluated the body of scientific evidence,” said study lead author Joonseok Kim, M.D., assistant professor of cardiology in the

Teenage drivers are eight times more likely to be involved in a collision or near miss during the first three months after getting a driver’s license, compared to the previous three months on a learner’s permit, suggests a study led by the National Institutes of Health. Teens are also four times more likely to engage

A new study published in Pediatrics found that young adults who had a parent incarcerated during their childhood are more likely to skip needed healthcare, smoke cigarettes, engage in risky sexual behaviors, and abuse alcohol, prescription and illicit drugs. These findings have potentially broad impact, as over five million U.S. children have had a parent

When playing an economic game those that were assigned as ‘lower status’ were more likely to share their wealth than their ‘higher status’ counterparts, according to a new study at Queen Mary University of London. The social experiment involved a series of economic games in which people played with other people for real money. The

Setbacks are to be expected when pursuing a goal, whether you are trying to lose weight or save money. The challenge is getting back on track and not giving up after a difficulty or crisis, says a marketing professor in Iowa State University’s Ivy College of Business. José Rosa, John and Deborah Ganoe Faculty Fellow,

A fulsome smile in a photo makes it easier for people to identify the individual, say researchers at the University of York. Previous research at York has shown that it is difficult for people to match a pair of unfamiliar faces in photographs, presenting significant issues for authorities to spot identity fraud. Research has also