Are you an older sibling? Did you feel unfairly treated compared to your brothers and sisters? Well, now you have science to back you up. According to Games Parents and Adolescents Play, a new sociology study published in The Economic Journal, the oldest kid in the family really does bear the brunt of parental strictness, while the younger brothers and sisters generally coast on through.
posted on May 5, 2008 - View this thread

From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm. Carl Zimmer looks at the work of Iain Couzin. [Via The Loom.]
posted on Nov 13, 2007 - View this thread

I appreciate you for reading this article. I resent you for snarking in the thread without reading it.
posted on Sep 5, 2007 - View this thread

Bonobo chimpanzees are commonly thought to be "an example of amicability, sensitivity and, well, humaneness" in the animal kingdom. Ian Parker's Swingers suggests a darker, more savage side to the species that belies popular perception.
posted on Aug 3, 2007 - View this thread

OMG!! Chicken cops break up bunny brawl!
posted on Apr 14, 2007 - View this thread

Filmmaker David O. Russell's history of abusive behavior is well-documented. It spawned fistfights with George Clooney on the set of Three Kings. But two recent videos from the set of I ♥ Huckabees provide a telltale glimpse of how Russell's "directorial style."
posted on Mar 22, 2007 - View this thread

Urban Etiquette : Confused about when to answer your cellphone? Not sure when to take off your iPod? Baffled as to what to say to that guy you saw in that movie with that chick when you see him on the street? Worry no more. In too much of a hurry to read this long article from New York Magazine? This short guide has you covered. Here are a few more New York specific examples. When all else fails, ask Mr. Social Grace. [more inside]
posted on Jun 22, 2006 - View this thread

The avuncular state - "A smarter, softer kind of paternalism is coming into style"
posted on Apr 12, 2006 - View this thread

It's official, humans are dumber than chimps. These guys show (at the NY Times level) that human kids will over-imitate every ritualized nuance modeled for them, whereas chimp kids just wanna get the damn cookie out of the box. Their website also describes more of their studies.
posted on Dec 13, 2005 - View this thread

Sarah Elizabeth Witt struggles to convey a word game [direct to quicktime] that caused her doctor to diagnose her as obsessive-compulsive.

"When I hear a word that starts with the letter U, I immediately gain access to the letter Y!"
posted on Nov 24, 2005 - View this thread

Diet and behavior.
posted on Sep 30, 2005 - View this thread

"Creatures are out there that can control brains." [pdf]

The women "spent more money on clothes and were consistently rated as more attractive", but were "less trustworthy and had more relationships with men". The men become "less well groomed undesirable loners who were more willing to fight". All "are at greater risk of being involved in car accidents". Why? Something has its tentacles in their brains. They probably got it from that cuddly old species, the domestic cat, which the parasite infects by making infected rats "almost taunt" the cats into eating them.

Parasites in the brain alter their host's behavior. It's not just video game fiction. Various multi-host parasites make their living by making their hosts less ambulatory and less willing to explore, by castrating them and making them less cautious of predators, or by forcing their hosts to stay out all night so as to be eaten in the morning. These parasites offer yet another example of how stupidly clever evolution can be, and raise questions about how free "free will" really is.
posted on Jun 10, 2005 - View this thread

Behavior in the voting booth. (by Louis Menand)
posted on Sep 10, 2004 - View this thread

How dogs became man's best friend: Dr Hare's hypothesis is that dogs are superbly sensitive to social cues from people...
His experiment was simple. He presented his animal subjects with two inverted cups. Then he hid the cups behind a screen, put a small piece of food under one of them, and took the screen away. The animal had to choose which cup to look under. If the experimenter gave no cue, both species got it right 50% of the time, as would be expected. However, if he signalled in some way which was the right cup, by pointing at it, tapping it, or even just gazing at it, a dog would choose correctly every time, while a chimpanzee would still do only slightly better than chance. [More at Harvard Gazette]
-- My question: are you able to reproduce his results?
posted on Feb 21, 2004 - View this thread

Vixen Love - Read the logs of AIM users tricked into a relationship with a mindless chat bot named Emily. Remember, VixenLove is just out to make friends!
posted on Dec 5, 2003 - View this thread

The International Center for Bathroom Etiquette makes me really glad that I'm a girl. I had no idea there were such complex decisions to be made about where to stand and which sink to use.
posted on Nov 23, 2003 - View this thread

At the recent Digital Games Research Conference held at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, Florence Chee and Richard Smith presented a paper on Everquest and its implications for addiction policy. Here's the full text and a decent summary here.
posted on Nov 7, 2003 - View this thread

Monkeys down tools . - Demand fair pay for a fair day's work. " Researchers taught brown capuchin monkeys to swap tokens for food. Usually they were happy to exchange this "money" for cucumber. But if they saw another monkey getting a grape - a more-liked food - they took offence. Some refused to work, others took the food and refused to eat it. "
posted on Sep 22, 2003 - View this thread

Riddle me this: why are so many people in such a hurry to monitor, record and analyze every aspect of modern life? A UCLA professor wants to outfit an entire first grade classroom with minuscule sensors. The National Science Foundation awarded $1.8 million to fund the study, which will see students wearing special caps tracking their location and what they're looking at while cameras and microphones will record their activities. All the data gathered will be processed by a data-mining software package. [more inside]
posted on Aug 4, 2003 - View this thread

I yearn for your tasty flesh

[ Gene Study Finds Cannibal Pattern ] - "Deep in the recesses of the human heart, lurking guiltily beneath the threshold of consciousness, there may lie a depraved craving — for the forbidden taste of human flesh. The basis for this morbid accusation, made by a team of researchers in London, is a genetic signature, found almost worldwide, that points to a long history of cannibalism" (NYT)
posted on Apr 11, 2003 - View this thread

Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing : "To offer a psychological explanation for the atrocities committed by perpetrators is not to forgive, justify or condone their behavior. Instead, the explanation simply allows us to understand the conditions under which many of us could be transformed into killing machines." (James Waller) In a Salon interview about his widely acclaimed, pathbreaking book Waller states, "Most people don't understand how easy it is to develop us-them [mindsets]......In our climate of fear in response to terrorism, I think we could pretty easily turn on people who have been our neighbors."
posted on Mar 17, 2003 - View this thread

Testimony of Teens Kidnapped w/ authorization of parents and taken to overseas "behavior modification" schools. After researching these schools almost 5 years ago I am horrified that most of them are still running and whose teachings are even showing up in the form of seminars in kindergarten. Has anyone else had experience with schools like this, whether directly or through a family member or friend ?
posted on Sep 30, 2002 - View this thread

Rejection reduces IQ "To live in society, people have to have an inner mechanism that regulates their behaviour. Rejection defeats the purpose of this, and people become impulsive and self-destructive. You have to use self-control to analyse a problem in an IQ test, for example - and instead, you behave impulsively"
posted on Mar 17, 2002 - View this thread

The Science of Getting Schnockered The "New Scientist" directory of articles relating to drunkenness. Some of my favorites: why drunk people tend to stagger more to one side than another, drunks can control their behavior if they really want to, and girls can match boys drink for drink, so long as they stick to beer.
posted on Jan 15, 2002 - View this thread

How Culture Molds Habits is a fascinating article. Read this article, tally another point for nurture. I've long thought this was true, but Nisbett's supposedly gathered rather a lot of data proving it is so. The article raises some interesting parts of the study, but I think the ramifications bear some considering. I'd be interested in reading the full study when it's published, but I haven't a clue where to get the Psychological Review. And can you imagine what the advertising execs will do with this stuff? Ads tailored to the way you think. Wheee. It does, of course, raise some fun questions about religion and politics.
posted on Aug 8, 2000 - View this thread