Recent Science News

Conscientious people have about 10% lower death risk, but agreeableness makes no difference
A meta-analysis of 569,859 people and 43,851 deaths found agreeableness had no link to mortality, while conscientiousness cut the risk of death by about 10% (HR 0.90), extraversion by 3%, and neuroticism raised it by 3%.

Answering an invitation with “maybe” annoys the host more than a plain “no”
In most of six experiments with about 1,700 Americans, roughly 63% to 65% of invitees thought a host would prefer a "maybe" to a "no", while only 34% to 48% of hosts did, and 80% of invitees said "maybe" anyway.

Watching two people debate deepened viewers’ thinking more than hearing each side speak alone
Adults who watched a short video of two actors debating immigration gave longer, richer explanations of their own views: 46% weighed both sides, against 29% after separate monologues. Probing questions alone made views simpler.

Chinese cities with denser camera networks saw steeper drops in crime
Using procurement data for 322 Chinese cities from 2014 to 2019, economists find that denser surveillance networks cut crime, especially publicly visible crime, at an estimated cost of about $6,373 per crime prevented.

Charities game star rating cutoffs, and a fourth star brings 6% more donations
Charities bunch just above Charity Navigator's star cutoffs, a response equal to halving administrative spending and partly driven by misreporting, while moving from three to four stars raises contributions by 6%.

After meeting a stranger, people underestimate how much they were liked, in 1,835 students
Across 12 getting-acquainted studies with 1,835 students, people rated their liking for a new partner at 5.26 out of 7 but guessed the partner liked them at only 4.71, while partners' actual liking was also higher than guessed.

More housing news coverage today predicts higher US home prices next quarter
A news-attention index built from Bloomberg data for all 50 US states explained 29% of the variation in next-quarter house price growth, and a one standard deviation rise in coverage predicted 0.37% faster price growth the following quarter.