Psychotherapy beats placebo for depression only by a small margin, a placebo researcher argues
In an Oxford University Press chapter, psychologist Jens Gaab argues that psychotherapy and open-label placebos are close relatives, noting that therapy’s specific advantage over placebo controls in depression is small and only marginally above the threshold for a clinically meaningful difference.
Fewer people think children are needed for a fulfilled life, and fertility plans are falling
Between 2012 and 2022 the ideal number of children in rich countries fell from 2.42 to 2.31, and plans to have a child within three years from 28% to 21%. The fading belief that children are needed for fulfillment contributed most.
Bone dice from Folsom sites suggest Native Americans gambled 12,000 years ago
An archaeologist identified 659 diagnostic and probable dice at 57 North American sites, including 20 from 12,000-year-old Folsom deposits, predating the earliest known Old World dice by more than 6,000 years.
Influencers stay authentic while growing, then sell out once enough people know them
An economic model shows why influencers endorse only on-brand products while building awareness, then switch to promoting almost anything once a large share of potential followers know them. Celebrities sell out sooner, and viral platforms can flip the pattern twice.
Executives who take questions from skeptical analysts win more credibility with investors
Managers who regularly answer unfavorable analysts on earnings calls see those analysts soften their views, get stronger market reactions to their forecasts, and suffer smaller stock losses when a peer firm restates its accounts.
Job seekers with hard-to-pronounce names get fewer callbacks and weaker academic jobs
Economics PhDs with harder-to-say names were less likely to land academic jobs and were placed at institutions about 70-80 spots lower in research rankings; in two audit studies, name difficulty explained roughly 10 to 50 percent of the ethnic name penalty.
High inflation pushed city Big Macs 9.5% above rural ones before the gap shrank
Tracking Big Mac prices at thousands of US McDonald’s, economists found the urban premium jumped from 1% in 2014 to 9.5% in 2023, then fell back to 1.3% in 2024. Under high inflation, wages and land costs drove the gap.
Older adults who feel young at heart face backlash from younger people
In two studies, younger and middle-aged adults rated older people who felt younger than their age as less warm, competent and likeable, and were less willing to interact with them, because they were seen as breaking age stereotypes.
Applicants interviewed by an AI voice agent got 12% more job offers than with humans
In a field experiment with 70,000 job applicants, interviews run by AI voice agents raised job offers by 12%, job starts by 18% and 30-day retention by 17%, and 78% of applicants given the choice picked the AI.