Recent Science News

Asking questions before reading beats listing learning goals, two experiments find
In two preregistered experiments, students given unanswerable questions before reading a textbook excerpt learned more than those who just read or who first saw learning objectives, with small to medium Bayesian effects favoring prequestions.

Only 44 of 2,529 Pennsylvanians accepted a free subscription to their local newspaper
In a field experiment, just 1.7% of people offered a free 13-week online subscription to the Philadelphia Inquirer or Pittsburgh Post-Gazette signed up, mostly older Democrats, and neither the offer nor promoted Facebook stories changed knowledge or attitudes.

Teens sent to China’s countryside grew up more altruistic but less trusting of government
Using the abrupt end of China's sent-down movement as a natural experiment, a survey of 1,821 urban-born adults finds those sent down are more risk averse, more altruistic and more reciprocal, yet less supportive of redistribution and less trusting of government.

China’s younger generation holds higher moral standards than its elders, survey data show
Using World Values Survey data from 2007, 2012 and 2018, a study finds Chinese people born after 1980 reject cheating, theft and violence more firmly than older cohorts, while acceptance of all three fell across the population, from about .26 to .16 for fare evasion and violence.

Women worry more than men about exclamation points, five studies find
Across five studies, people linked exclamation points more with women than men, and women thought harder and felt less sure about using them. Messages with exclamations left more positive impressions overall, whoever sent them.

Law professors who joined Twitter got 22% more citations a year
Comparing U.S. law professors on Twitter with synthetic control groups of similar colleagues, researchers found joining raised citations by 22% per year and lifted journal placements by up to 10 ranks.

After a data breach, Florida hospitals sped up care and cut heart attack deaths
Comparing six breached Florida hospitals with six matched ones across 1.3 million emergency admissions, researchers found breaches were followed by 0.56 fewer hours to admission, 0.18 fewer days to treatment and a one-point drop in heart attack mortality.