After Spotify removed R. Kelly from its playlists in 2018, streams of the delisted songs fell about 25% while his other songs dropped only 3.8%. The 2019 documentary and #MuteRKelly calls actually raised streams, by 117.74% in the following week.
Apology posts on X used words about one letter longer than the same people's other posts, and in a ranking test 49 readers judged apologies with longer words as more apologetic. Rare words had no such effect.
Pooling 10 studies with 4,674 adults, researchers found that social media breaks had no significant effect on positive affect (g = 0.03), negative affect (g = -0.01) or life satisfaction (g = 0.03).
In an experiment with 383 UC Berkeley students, those holding socially unpopular views self-censored more. Showing students how many peers had stayed silent corrected their beliefs about public opinion and made holders of unpopular views about 17% more likely to speak.
In 11.66 million Fiverr transactions, longer reply delays meant a lower chance of winning the contract, and even 5 to 10 minute delays dramatically reduced hiring; experiments with 3,603 people showed fast replies signal future responsiveness.
A study of 2,606 young adults in 28 countries and Hong Kong found that recalling a nostalgic memory increased social connectedness, self-continuity and meaning in life across cultures, while its triggers varied with national wealth and climate.
Gaze patterns across 700 photos identified individuals 52% to 63% of the time, against 1% to 2% by chance, and people whose gaze on social scenes was more distinctive reported fewer autistic traits.
Surveys of Chinese parents show the 2021 ban on for-profit private tutoring raised expected total fertility by 7 to 8%, mainly because parents saw less educational competition. Birth rates also fell less in cities hit harder by the ban.
In blind tests, raters found ChatGPT 3.5's jokes funnier than those of 63% to 87% of laypeople, and its satirical headlines scored 2.37 out of 6 against 2.49 for real Onion headlines, a gap too small to be significant.
Across four preregistered experiments with 770 participants, people rated sources as more credible when their statements had been repeated, and that boost carried over to new statements from the same sources.