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.
Across five studies, including 2.3 million Weibo posts and experiments with 1,945 people, feeling that one is witnessing history increased both the sense that life has meaning and the search for it. On the day Queen Elizabeth II died, "witness" users were 73% more likely to post about meaning.
In the Add Health study, adults rated attractive were over 10 percentage points less likely to game than those rated unattractive, and attractive gamers played 2.05 fewer hours a week; they also reported more close friends, and teen gaming did not predict adult looks.
Across nearly 1.4 million images and videos, women appeared younger than men despite no age gap in the US workforce; female celebrities on IMDb were 6.5 years younger, and ChatGPT rated older men's resumes highest.
In a randomized trial with 818 preschool and kindergarten children in 47 US schools, a daily 3 to 5 minute song-and-dance video program raised scores on the words it taught by 0.30 standard deviations, and most of the gain held two months later.
After Google stopped making maps in EU search results clickable in January 2024, searches for "maps" and "google maps" rose more than 21%, but total traffic to Google Maps did not change and rivals such as Bing Maps gained nothing.
Across 12 experiments, first names and city names paired with highly memorable faces were recalled more often than names paired with forgettable faces. Memorable scenes gave no such boost to the names linked with them.
In time-use data from countries around the world, full-time male workers in the top income quartile sleep around half an hour less per day than those in the bottom quartile, and people in richer countries sleep less on average, implying an income elasticity of sleep of about -0.04.