Alcohol reduces our ability to assess facial symmetry in others, according to University of Roehampton researchers who say the effect is most pronounced in women. The findings, appearing in the journal Addiction, provide new insights into the infamous beer goggles effect. Facial symmetry (where one side of the face mirrors the other) is generally thought […]
Biology appears to play a major role in wine experts’ acute sense of taste, suggests a study from Penn State that found consumers are “taste blind” to many of the subtleties of wine. The findings indicate that expert recommendations in wine magazines may be too subtle for average wine drinkers to experience. “What we found […]
The general assumption that text messaging encourages unconstrained language is a myth, says Canadian linguist Joan Lee, who contends that texting has a negative impact on people’s linguistic ability to interpret and accept words. For her thesis, Lee asked a cohort of university students about their reading habits, including text messaging, and presented them with […]
American itch boffins have been studying which parts of the body produce the most pleasure when scratched. Their analysis of itch relief at different body sites and related pleasurability has been published in the British Journal of Dermatology. World-renowned itch expert Gil Yosipovitch, who conducted the study, said he wanted to evaluate whether itch intensity […]
A new Virginia Tech study highlights the unexpected and dramatic consequences subtle social signals in group settings can have on individual cognitive functioning, especially for women. The researchers say settings such as juries, parties, business meetings and classrooms all have the potential to derail our cognitive skills. “You may joke about how committee meetings make […]
To avoid conversational confusion and optimize language, linguists have traditionally argued that every word should have just one meaning, but a new study from MIT turns that notion on its head, showing instead that ambiguity in words actually makes language more efficient. The new study, published in the journalCognition, proposes that ambiguity increases efficiency by […]
Gossip has traditionally had a bad reputation, but a convoluted series of experiments carried out in the US have demonstrated the mental physiological benefits of gossiping. The study focused on “prosocial” gossip that warns others about untrustworthy or dishonest people, as opposed to the voyeuristic rumor-mongering about the ups and downs of tabloid celebrities. Gossip […]
The bacterium Sutterella was found to be present at remarkably high levels in the gastrointestinal tracts of children with autism and scientists at Columbia University are pondering what the connection might be. The intriguing study, published in the journal mBio, notes that children with autism frequently have gastrointestinal problems, but the underlying reason that autism […]
While creativity helps people solve difficult problems, it also makes them more likely to cheat than less creative people, claims new research that suggests creativity increases a person’s ability to rationalize their cheating. Lead researcher Francesca Gino, of Harvard University, conducted a series of five experiments to test the hypothesis that more creative people would […]
US and European scientists have proposed two different methods for detecting finance bubbles, one analyzes verb and noun usage in financial reporting and the other throws some heavy mathematics at the problem. The verdict? There isn’t a gold bubble but some recent IPOs look very bubblish. In the first study, researchers from University College Dublin […]
