After Massachusetts required quarterly financial reports in 2011, its hospitals raised margins by about one point by cutting paid staff 7.2% and equipment, while heart failure and pneumonia deaths each rose about 8% and readmissions climbed.
In a 2020 survey of 1,000 Americans, the most politically self-confident were nearly five times as likely to have blocked someone over politics (39% vs 8%). Low self-esteem, not high, went with more tolerance of partisan discrimination.
Across seven studies, vintage typography made products from bikes to cosmetics seem safer, lifting brand attitudes, purchase intent and willingness to pay; with a vintage font, a product described as having unsafe ingredients was rated as safe as one with no safety information at all.
In two preregistered surveys of about 400 people each, ChatGPT's answers to real advice-column dilemmas were judged more balanced, complete, empathetic and helpful than the columnists' own, even at equal length, but most participants still preferred a human to answer their own problems.
Nonprofit hospitals that hired management consultants paid $15.7 million on average, $7.8 billion in total from 2009 to 2023, yet 306 of them showed no significant change in revenue, margins, operations or patient outcomes against 513 matched hospitals.
When a person dressed as Batman boarded a Milan metro car, passengers offered their seat to a seemingly pregnant woman 67% of the time, against 38% without him. Of those who helped while Batman was present, 44% said they had not seen him.
Pooling raw data from 68 studies and more than 10,000 people, researchers found the odds of drifting off-task rose about 6% every minute, so that by the 20th minute people were off-task roughly 49% of the time.
A meta-analysis of 106 student samples tested with Wechsler IQ tests since 1939 finds undergraduates' average IQ has fallen by about 0.2 points a year to roughly 102, close to the population average of 100.
Men who sniffed odorless emotional tears from women retaliated 43.7% less in a provocation game than after sniffing saline. Tears activated four human smell receptors and changed activity in brain areas linking smell and aggression.
Among 347 working adults applying for a simulated retail sales job, those best at faking a personality test scored higher on mental ability (r = .25) and lower on psychopathy (r = -.29), competitiveness and immorality.