Stats and Curiosities - Harvard Business Review

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money impairs people’s ability to derive happiness from pleasurable experiences, the researchers say.

      the taste of real sugar improves self-control

      People who rinsed their mouths with lemonade containing sugar were 9% faster in identifying the font colors of on-screen words, a task that has been shown to demand self-control, than people who rinsed with artificially sweetened lemonade, says a team led by Matthew A. Sanders of the University of Georgia. Rinsing the mouth with glucose may improve self-control by activating brain areas associated with reward, the researchers say.

      younger siblings take more risks, even in baseball

      In a study comparing siblings who play major league baseball, researchers found that younger brothers are 10.6 times more likely to try to steal bases—and 3.2 times more likely to be successful at it. Frank J. Sulloway of UC Berkeley and Richard L. Zweigenhaft of Guilford College analyzed the performance of 700 brothers who were major leaguers in an effort to test a hypothesis from evolutionary theory that younger siblings are more likely than older siblings to participate in high-risk activities.

      disgust makes people more receptive to the new

      51% of people who viewed disgusting images from the film Trainspotting were willing to trade a closed box of office supplies for a new one, compared with just 32% of people who weren’t exposed to the repellent images, say Seunghee Han of Chung-Ang University in South Korea and Jennifer Lerner and Richard Zeckhauser of Harvard University. Incidental feelings of disgust thus appear to disrupt the deeply held “status quo bias” that leads people to favor what they already have over something new, the researchers say.

      a fishy smell makes people more suspicious

      People who had been exposed to a fishy smell in a hallway were willing to invest 24% less money with another person, suggesting that fishy smells induce suspicion and undermine cooperation, at least among English speakers, say Spike W. S. Lee of the University of Toronto and Norbert Schwarz of the University of Michigan. The blending of metaphor and reality goes both ways, the researchers say: Being suspicious also makes people more likely to literally smell something fishy.

      bad

      behavior,

      good

      behavior

      Lying, stealing, cheating, and booing the opposing pitcher: This is the dark side of the Organization Man (and Woman). If the findings in this chapter hit too close to home and burden your conscience, bear in mind the message that’s implicit in the research of Claudia Townsend of the University of Miami and Wendy Liu of UC San Diego: Planning to improve your behavior can backfire. Maybe it’s better just to accept yourself and stay the way you are.

      criminals are more likely to target people seen as deviant

      Car wash attendants who cleaned the interiors of automobiles stole loose change 30% of the time, but the rate doubled if the driver had left a beer can and a racy magazine in the car, say Ronald Burns, Patrick Kinkade, and Michael Bachmann of Texas Christian University. The experiment suggests that you’re more likely to become a victim of petty crime if would-be criminals see you as more socially “deviant,” the researchers say.

      iphone thefts skew crime stats in new york

      Thefts of Apple products such as iPhones significantly skew crime statistics in New York City, says the New York Times. Thefts of the company’s products rose by 3,890 in 2012 over 2011; without that increase, overall crime in the city would have been down for the year. Thefts of non-Apple devices declined, officials said.

      under-the-table is the way to get public contracts in china

      More than 90% of experts responding to a survey in China said that a company conducting under-the-table practices to influence decision makers would have a better chance of winning a public-project contract than a company that followed all the rules, say Xuguang Song of Beijing Normal University and Wenhao Cheng of Tsinghua University, both in China. The survey of academics in 36 cities also indicated that Shanghai is perceived to be the most corrupt city in China. On a more positive note, more than half of respondents said their cities had become less corrupt.

      you’re more selfish when you feel close to a selfish person

      People who were encouraged to identify with a selfish individual became more selfish, keeping 11% more cash when they were asked to divide money between themselves and another person, say Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School and Adam D. Galinsky of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School. The reason for the effect: when people feel psychologically close to someone who behaves selfishly, they’re more likely to consider the behavior to be less shame-worthy and less unethical, the researchers found.

      it helps to boo the opposing pitcher

      Baseball pitchers threw 40% fewer strikes when the crowd jeered than when it cheered, according to an experiment led by L. Kimberly Epting of Elon University. The research, which took place in a college setting, shows that the real value of fans’ behavior during a game may be in their antagonism toward the opposing team, the authors say. Basketball players’ free-throw accuracy, however, was the same whether the crowd was cheering or jeering.

      decline of unions increases burglaries and theft

      The decline in union membership in the United States from 1993 to 2006, and the consequent loss of well-paying blue-collar jobs, increased property crime by 15%, according to an analysis by Robert Baumann and Bryan Engelhardt of the College of the Holy Cross. Moreover, each 1-percentage-point decrease in unionization increases burglaries, larceny, arson, and auto theft by roughly 140 crimes per 100,000 people. Well-paying jobs deter crime by increasing a criminal’s potential cost of spending time in prison. The proportion of unionized workers declined from 23.5% in 1973 to 12.4% in 2008.

      many financial pros feel pressure to compromise ethics

      30% of financial services professionals say their compensation or bonus plans create pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law, according to a survey in the United States and UK conducted for the law firm Labaton Sucharow. 22% of female respondents say they’d face retaliation if they reported wrongdoing in the workplace, compared with 12% of male respondents.

      male professionals with higher ethical standards earn less

      Although companies have focused greater attention

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