Five experiments, including a large field experiment, found that apologies for service failures backfire when customers were unaware of the failure, lowering satisfaction, trust, recommendations and repeat business because the apology draws attention to the problem.

A study of the thousands of ex-Confederates who settled in São Paulo after the U.S. Civil War finds they drove cotton, textile and farm mechanization in a once-poor region, and left Protestantism and English behind, but no lasting legacy in politics or racial inequality.

In 917 pairs of adult twins from the UK, genes accounted for 41-43% of the differences in trait hope, with the remaining 57-59% traced to experiences unique to each person. Upbringing shared by siblings played almost no role.

Supermarket scanner data from the Washington, D.C. area show embarrassing items are far more likely to be bought at self-checkout than at a cashier, especially condoms and pregnancy tests, and shoppers accept about 8.5 cents of extra time cost for that privacy.

Comparing Babylonian court records, the Gortyn Code from Crete, biblical law and ancient oaths, legal historian Orit Malka argues that witnesses in many early societies held the power to decide cases, not merely supply facts.

Across nine experiments, people felt more ownership of rentals from companies than from individuals and were more willing to modify them. In a lab test, 25.8% marked a book rented from a company versus 13.4% from a person.

Using data from about 20,000 people in 66 countries, researchers found that the more individualistic, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic a country, the higher the happiness its people consider ideal. Only around 15% of people in one survey wanted maximum happiness.

Among 448 identical and 196 fraternal twin pairs, how funny people rated themselves was heritable, but their judged skill at writing funny cartoon captions showed no significant genetic effect and was shaped mainly by environment.