Everyone from Freud to Tina Fey has tried to understand why some things are funny. Now, new research concludes that one key to comedy is for a situation to violate a moral standard, but in a gentle way. [More]



Sigmund Freud - Tina Fey - Comedy - Psychology - Ethics

When it comes to elections, sometimes we vote with our heads and sometimes with our hearts. But scientists at Stanford say we might also be voting with our pompoms. Because they’ve found that our behavior at the polls is influenced by the results of local sporting events, work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . [Andrew Healy, Neil Malhotra and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo, http://bit.ly/cURQ2E ] [More]



Stanford University - Sport - Politics - United States - Voting

When it comes to elections, sometimes we vote with our heads and sometimes with our hearts. But scientists at Stanford say we might also be voting with our pompoms. Because they’ve found that our behavior at the polls is influenced by the results of local sporting events, work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . [Andrew Healy, Neil Malhotra and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo, http://bit.ly/cURQ2E ] [More]



Stanford University - Sport - Politics - United States - Voting

Shhh, keep this podcast a secret. Because new research points to a possible blind spot in airport security screening: it may be easier to sneak something dangerous past security–a box cutter, for example–by also including an obvious and innocuous banned object, like a water bottle, into the mix as a distraction.

Scientists recruited college students to find targets on a computer display. Their task: search for lines that formed a T amidst other non-T lines in 10 different experiments. Sometimes the Ts were easy to find, sometimes they were more hidden. When the easy and tough ones appeared with equal frequency, the students found both on the same screen.

I used to scoff at the idea of Minute Rice. I mean, are we really in such a rush that we can’t wait, like, 10 minutes for a regular old bowl of rice? Well, yes, yes we are. And fast food may be making matters worse. Because a study in the journal Psychological Science shows that even a glimpse of those golden arches makes us act impatiently. [More]

They say that men don’t like to ask for directions. Well, that reluctance to seek expert advice may extend to the shopping cart. Because a study in the Journal of Consumer Marketing finds that guys also will likely avoid asking salespeople for suggestions about wine. [More]