In a survey of 222 adults, people who reported more prosocial behaviour used emojis more often and preferred positive ones, while poorer mental health went with a stronger liking for negative emojis (r = .42).
Tracking 44,213 Chess.com players for six months, researchers found an hour of deliberate practice raised ratings by 3.11 points versus 0.86 for an hour of play, a 3.61-fold efficiency gap. Yet players spent over 90% of their time just playing games.
In a survey of 839 employed adults in Germany, environmental activism was positively linked to Machiavellianism, narcissism, antihierarchical aggression and anticonventionalism, and most of these links held after controlling for the Big Five traits and political orientation.
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.