This respondent said that watching cat videos causes her mood to improve. What do you think? Photo: Rasulovs/Thinkstock. Here's a provocative headline from Medical News Today: Viewing cat videos boosts energy and positive emotions. That sounds like exciting news to me: The causal claim implies that we should watch some of those cute kitty videos …
Continue reading Meow! “Viewing cat videos boosts energy and mood” Really?
There's a fun interactive datagraphic on gallup.com's website. It's called "State of the States." You can select a polling variable, such as "overall well-being," "support for Obama," or "religiosity," and it will show you how each U.S. state scores on that variable. Feel free to take a minute to play with the interactive right now. …
Yet another case of fabricated data, this time from political science, is being analyzed in the news lately. Last December, Science published an article showing that certain types of canvassing techniques could dramatically change people's attitudes toward marriage equality. However, the data for the study were apparently fabricated by one of its key authors. Here …
These Bangladeshi girls received aid from BRAC, the same program that was investigated in this study. Photo: Brent Stirton/Getty Images Do international aid programs work? Many of us send money to an organization like Heifer International, Mercy Corps, or Oxfam. Does the money these programs invest, either through direct aid, microloans, gifts of livestock, or …
Was "taking a walk" in the study a between groups or within groups independent variable? © Dave & Les Jacobs / AGE FotoStock The New York Times reported recently on a study suggesting that taking a walk can be beneficial. The article reports on a study showing that taking a lunchtime walk improves workers' enthusiasm …
Do surgeons perform better, or worse, after taking a day off? Photo: Altrendo Images / Getty Images. There's a great example of a quasi-experiment in the news. The research question concerned the skills of surgeons. As the story points out, surgeons are similar to musicians, in that their manual dexterity skills develop with constant use …
Continue reading Do vacation days harm surgeons? A quasi-experiment
Photo Credit: John Crooms/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images. "Watching 'Real Housewives' Makes You Violent" At least, that's the claim in the headline from the Daily Beast. I imagine that most of us feel squeamish after watching episodes of trashy television. But can it really make us violent? Fortunately, psychological researchers are able to test …
Continue reading Watching Some Types of Reality TV Makes you Violent…
National Public Radio has a new series of stories on play in children and animals. In this report, they interview scientists who have studied how play affects the brain. The scientists in the interview do not go into much detail on the methods that they have used to study play. However, the article provides a …
Exercise makes you lose weight, right? Theoretically, yes--exercise burns calories, and that makes the body lose weight. Unless, of course, you eat extra food after exercising...then you won't lose so much. A series of studies described here shows that when people exert physical activity and think they have exercised, they tend to treat themselves to …
You might not know the name "vocal fry," but if you've been on a college campus lately, you've definitely heard it: Vocal fry is a creaky, low sound that up to 2/3 of college women put at the end of sentences. A friend once called it the "sticky voice." The Atlantic just covered a research …
Continue reading Going on an interview? Avoid the “vocal fry…”