In my Science Confirms the Obvious post today, I discussed the first psychological proof (so say the authors) that humans can indeed experience emotions without immediately knowing why. We do this, they say, because we evolved that way. True, scientists love that explanation, but here it’s quite intriguing.

Say you’re walking through the woods and encounter a grizzly bear. You see it and freeze that instant—even before your stomach drops with fear.

[ Read Full Story ]

Psychologist: “How are you feeling?”
Patient: “I feel like I want to punch the lights out of…out of…this anger management pillow printed with my boss’s photo!”
Psychologist: “So that emotion would be called…”
Patient: “Annoyance. Anger.”
Psychologist: “And why do you think that is?”
Patient: “Because he made me mad.”
Psychologist: "And..."
Patient: “Because I am insecure about being passed over for that promotion?”
Psychologist: “Go on…”

A fundamental credo of therapy is to first be aware of your emotions, preferably before they hijack your actions. But often we don’t immediately recognize that we’re feeling irritable, fearful, or disgusted, especially when our significant other is there to notice it first. And sometimes it takes a moment to pinpoint why.

[ Read Full Story ]

The latest breakthrough in the burgeoning field of birth-order research reveals that parents discipline older kids much more severely than the younger ones. My own thoroughly unscientific poll also finds that this experience is common: Four out of five friends felt that hell yeah, younger siblings got away with murder. Well, not murder per se, but other transgressions such as sneaking home at 5 AM, shoplifting car stereos from Caldor, and smearing Vaseline on the family toilet seat.

[ Read Full Story ]

I’ve been thinking about chimps lately. I called them a “who” and not a “which” in a recent piece I produced for the American Museum of Natural History. This earned me a virtual slap by my copy editor. As in:

“Chimpanzees, who WHICH are not bipedal…”

I was just giving a nod to a fellow hominid—the taxonomic group that includes chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and humans. Pan troglodytes are 99.8% genetically similar to us, making them our closest living relative.

[ Read Full Story ]

The last time I made an impulse buy was Saturday night. I was swept into a bidding war with a burly man at a tattoo art auction, and in the end spent $275 on a terribly lovely piece of original flash that features, among other things, a hula-dancing wolf and a cockroach sporting a banner with the word “YUMMY.” Frivolous? Perhaps. But I was in a good mood and it was for a good cause—to support the chronically ill 9-month-old son of a NYC tattooist.

However, a new psychological study suggests that if I were sad and self-absorbed on Saturday, I may have paid even more.

[ Read Full Story ]

Sorry fellas, but she’s probably just being nice to you.

Many women know that men sometimes mistake friendliness—say, smiling and eye contact—for sexual interest. Psychological research has long backed up their experience. A new study appearing in the April issue of the journal Psychological Science is no exception. It found that college-age heterosexual men who viewed images of women misidentified their body language and facial expressions as sexually suggestive 12 percent of the time. Women made the same mistake only 8.7 percent of the time.

These findings are nothing new, but when the researchers ran the second part of the experiment a curious pattern emerged.

[ Read Full Story ]

Caffeine wakes you up, rock stars die young and long ambulance rides aren't ideal. Sound obvious? You bet. But there's more than meets the eye here. On this week's episode of Cocktail Party Science, the writers and editors of PopSci's "Science Confirms the Obvious," talk to host Chuck Cage about the studies that make you say "duh" and why they're worth a second look.

[ Read Full Story ]

Here’s a quiz. Out of the jobs below, who do you think is most likely to have alcoholism issues? (Scroll to the bottom to see which industries ranked highest to lowest.)

Construction worker
Financier
Farmer
Truck driver
Cocktail server
Teacher
Shopgirl/guy

Need I state the obvious? A new study by The George Washington University Medical Center did. Their "Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems" team reports this week that 15 percent of those who work in the hospitality industry—bartenders; waiters and waitresses; casino, nightclub, hotel workers—suffer from serious alcohol-related problems. This tops 12 other sectors of employment. Sounds like a problem of freely available booze and late work hours to me.

[ Read Full Story ]