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People find alcohol sweeter in noisy environments, which might drown out our ability to judge how much we are drinking. Research conducted by Dr Lorenzo Stafford, a psychologist from the University of Portsmouth, was the first experimental study to find out how music can alter the taste of alcohol. The research built on earlier research which found that people drank more alcohol and faster if loud music was playing.

In Dr Stafford’s study, participants had to rate a selection of drinks varying in alcohol content on the basis of alcohol strength, sweetness, and bitterness. They were given one of four different levels of distraction, from no distraction to loud club-type music playing at the same time as reading a news report. The study found that drinks were rated significantly sweeter overall when participants were listening to music alone.

A study published in NeuroReport measured how long students could keep their hands in cold water. During the exercise, they could repeat an expletive or a neutral word. When swearing, the 67 student volunteers reported less pain and on average endured 40 seconds longer. "Swearing is such a common response to pain that there has to be an underlying reason why we do it," says psychologist Richard Stephens of Keele University, who led the study. "I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear," he adds.

Earlier studies have shown that unlike normal language, which relies on the outer few millimeters in the left hemisphere of the brain, expletives hinge on evolutionarily ancient structures buried deep inside the right half. One such structure is the amygdala, an almond-shaped group of neurons that can trigger a fight-or-flight response in which our heart rate climbs and we become less sensitive to pain. Indeed, the students' heart rates rose when they swore, a fact the researchers say suggests that the amygdala was activated.

When young, circus elephants are attached by heavy chains to large stakes driven deep into the ground. They pull and yank, but the chain is too strong, the stake too rooted. One day they give up, having learned that they cannot pull free, and from that day forward they can be "chained" with a slender rope. When this enormous animal feels any resistance, though it has the strength to pull the whole circus tent over, it stops trying. Because it believes it cannot.

"You will never amount to anything. You cannot sing. You are not smart enough. You are a loser. You should have more realistic goals. You are the reason our marriage broke up. Without you kids I would have had a chance. You are worthless." This opera is being sung in homes all over America right now, the stakes driven into the ground, the heavy chains attached, the children reaching the point they believe they cannot pull free. And at that point, they cannot.

Unless and until something changes their view, unless they grasp the striking fact that they are tied with a thread, that the chain is an illusion, that they were fooled, and ultimately, that whoever so fooled them was wrong about them and that they were wrong about themselves -- unless all this happens, these children are not likely to show society their positive attributes as adults.

It seems like everyone wants to be happier. But even happiness can have a dark side, according to the authors of a new review article published in Perspectives on Psychological Science. They say that happiness should not be thought of as a universally good thing, and outline four ways in which this is the case. Indeed, not all types and degrees of happiness are equally good, and even pursuing happiness can make people feel worse.

You frequently have to ask people for things. You will also have more and more people asking you to do favors for them. Here is what I have learned: You can maximize your odds of getting what you want by minimizing the work the other person has to do to help you.

Be appropriately selfish. It is ok to ask for things. It is ok to ask for things from someone who can help you more than you can help them right now. Just stay within reason, and do not ask people to do things that seriously puts their reputation on the line.

Always have a one sentence summary. You might think your three paragraph message is short, and it might be if the person you are emailing happens to get no other email. More likely she has hundreds of messages in her inbox and your message feels anything but "short."

Part of the problem, I believe, is that we see jihadists through a kind of inverse prism that robs us of the ability to see the parts that make up the whole. Individual terrorists might indeed be ideologically-obsessive murderous maniacs, but at the same time also be for example, football fans, loving parents or Eskimo ear-wrestling enthusiasts. Like those of all human beings, their motivations are complex.

Extensive research by Satoshi Kanazawa and colleagues at the London School of Economics and Political Science have uncovered significant differences in sleep-timing preferences among people, depending on their IQ scores. The research shows that people with higher IQs tend to be more active nocturnally, going to bed later, and are more apt to be night-owls. People with lower IQs tend to restrict their activities primarily to daytime and usually retire to bed sooner after nightfall.

According to Kanazawa, ancestral humans were typically diurnal, and that a shift towards more nocturnal activities is an "evolutionarily novel preference" of the type normally found in more intelligent individuals, demonstrating "a higher level of cognitive complexity" in the practitioners. However, a study by psychologist Marina Giampietro indicates evening-types tend to be less reliable, less emotionally stable, and more apt to suffer from depression, addictions, and eating disorders.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/smart-people-sleep-late-82486792.html

A new study shows that people feel morally cleansed when they are physically clean, and as such are more inclined to judge others more harshly. The study conducted by Chen-Bo Zhong at Northwestern University found that “participants who cleansed their hands before rating the social issues judged these issues to be more morally wrong compared to those who did not cleanse their hands.”

Those who had a self-image of cleanliness and purity made more harsh moral judgements on social issues. Crucially, this association was entirely mediated by their having an inflated sense of moral virtue compared with their peers. "Acts of cleanliness have not only the potential to shift our moral pendulum to a more virtuous self, but also license harsher moral judgment of others," Zhong concluded.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/clean-people-feel-morally-superior/

An interesting yet disheartening series of socioeconomic experiments shows that those on the lower-income levels are more likely to give and be charitable than their higher paid counterparts. The findings come from experiments carried out by UC Berkeley doctoral student Paul Piff and his team. A recent national survey in the US reiterates the results, revealing lower-income people give more of their hard-earned money to charity than the wealthy.

At a time when the richest one percent of Americans own more than the bottom 90 percent combined, the findings are timely. "Our data suggests that an ironic and self-perpetuating dynamic may in part explain this trend," the researchers write. "Whereas lower-class individuals may give more of their resources away, upper-class individuals may tend to preserve and hold onto their wealth. This differential pattern could exacerbate economic inequality."

Prior research done by Piff and his colleagues suggests lower income people might be more compassionate because they are more closely rooted to and dependent on others, therefore more empathetic. It is also thought that the more money the lower-earning people make in their lifetime, the higher their status becomes. As a result, their ability to connect with others' point-of-view disappears, including the low-income population they were once ties to.

http://www.physorg.com/news201364510.html

Contrary to the Machiavellian cliché, nice people are more likely to rise to power. Then something strange happens: Authority atrophies the very talents that got them there. Surveys of organizations find that the vast majority of rude and inappropriate behaviors, such as the shouting of profanities, come from the offices of those with the most authority. Headlines are filled with the latest misstep of someone in a position of power.

Psychologists refer to this as the paradox of power. The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power. Instead of being polite, honest and outgoing, they become impulsive, reckless and rude. People with lots of authority tend to behave like neurological patients with a damaged orbito-frontal lobe, a brain area that is crucial for empathy and decision-making.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704407804575425561952689390.html