News U Can Use

Seven-year-old children only need to interact with a person once to learn who to trust and seek information from, according to a study by Queen's University researchers.

"It shows that kids really pay attention to people's accuracy and they don't forget it, even after interacting with that person one time," says psychology professor Stanka Fitneva, who conducted the study with graduate student Kristen Dunfield.

The study tested adults, seven-year-olds and four-years-olds by asking a question and then having two people on a computer screen give a right and wrong answer.

When a second question was asked and participants were told they could only ask one person for the answer, the adults and seven year olds always choose to ask the person who previously gave the right answer.

Fear can make you run, it can make you fight, and it can glue you to the spot.

Scientists have identified not only the part of the brain but the specific type of neurons that determine how mice react to a frightening stimulus. In a study published in Neuron, they combined pharmaceutical and genetic approaches with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in mice.

Their findings show that deciding whether or not to freeze to fear is a more complex task for our brains than we realised. The scientists used an innovative technique to control the activity of specific cells in the brain of mice that were experiencing fear. The mice were genetically engineered so that only these cells contain a chemical receptor for a specific drug. When the scientists inject the mouse with that drug it acts on the receptor and blocks the electrical activity of those cells allowing the researchers to find out how these cells are involved in controlling fear.

People are unconsciously fairer and more generous when they are in clean-smelling environments, according to a soon-to-be published study led by a Brigham Young University professor. The research found a dramatic improvement in ethical behavior with just a few spritzes of citrus-scented Windex.

The researchers see implications for workplaces, retail stores and other organizations that have relied on traditional surveillance and security measures to enforce rules.

"Companies often employ heavy-handed interventions to regulate conduct, but they can be costly or oppressive," said lead researcher Katie Liljenquist from Brigham Young University, whose office smells quite average. "This is a very simple, unobtrusive way to promote ethical behavior."

While success is surely sweeter than failure, it seems failure is a far better teacher, and organizations that fail spectacularly often flourish more in the long run, according to a new study by Vinit Desai, of the University of Colorado Denver Business School.

Desai's research, published in the Academy of Management Journal, focused on companies and organizations that launch satellites, rockets and shuttles into space – an arena where failures are high profile and hard to conceal.

Desai found that organizations not only learned more from failure than success, they retained that knowledge longer.

"We found that the knowledge gained from success was often fleeting while knowledge from failure stuck around for years," he said. "But there is a tendency in organizations to ignore failure or try not to focus on it. Managers may fire people or turn over the entire workforce while they should be treating the failure as a learning opportunity."

 Trusting others may not make you a fool or a Pollyanna, according to a study in the current Social Psychological and Personality Science. Instead it can be a sign that you're smart.

The more economically dependent a man is on his female partner, the more likely he is to cheat on her, according to new research to be presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

"But for women, economic dependency seems to have the opposite effect: the more dependent they are on their male partners, the less likely they are to engage in infidelity," said Christin Munsch, a sociology Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University, and author of the study, "The Effect of Relative Income Disparity on Infidelity for Men and Women."

According to the study, which examined 18- to 28-year-old married and cohabitating respondents who were in the same relationship for more than a year, men who were completely dependent on their female partner's income were five times more likely to cheat than men who contributed an equal amount of money to the partnership.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Irrational behavior is a part of human nature, but as MIT professor Ariely has discovered in 20 years of researching behavioral economics, people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion. Drawing on psychology and economics, behavioral economics can show us why cautious people make poor decisions about sex when aroused, why patients get greater relief from a more expensive drug over its cheaper counterpart and why honest people may steal office supplies or communal food, but not money.

People generally like to see generous people rewarded and selfish people punished. Now, new research reveals a critical link between how we perceive another's intentions and our evaluation of their behavior. The study, published by Cell Press in the journal Neuron, makes some intriguing observations about how a description of the impact of an individual's actions on a group can alter the neural representation of their observed behavior.

When people judge another's actions, they often consider both the other person's outcome and their intentions. For example, in deciding whether a car salesperson's price is fair, people take into account both the price itself and their judgment of how honest the salesperson seems.

Ovulating women unconsciously buy sexier clothes, says new research from the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. The study finds that ovulating women unconsciously dress to impress – doing so not to impress men, but to outdo rival women during the handful of days each month when they are ovulating.

"The desire for women at peak fertility to unconsciously choose products that enhance appearance is driven by a desire to outdo attractive rival women," says Kristina Durante, a post-doctoral fellow at the Carlson School. "If you look more desirable than your competition, you are more likely to stand out."

This research, forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research, provides some of the first evidence of how, why, and when consumer behavior is influenced by hormonal factors. Durante and co-authors focused their predictions on the fact that competition for a suitable partner would be influenced by a woman's fertility status.

Forced to wait for fifteen minutes at the airport luggage carousel leaves many of us miserable and irritated. Yet if we'd spent the same waiting time walking to the carousel we'd be far happier. That's according to Christopher Hsee and colleagues, who say we're happier when busy but that unfortunately our instinct is for idleness. Unless we have a reason for being active we choose to do nothing - an evolutionary vestige that ensures we conserve energy, according to the British Psychological Society