December 6, 2010

Social Science Palooza

By DAVID BROOKS

Every day, hundreds of thousands of scholars study human behavior. Every day, a few of their
studies are bundled and distributed via e-mail by Kevin Lewis, who covers the social sciences for
The Boston Globe and National Affairs. And every day, I file away these studies because I find
them bizarrely interesting.
In this column, Im going to try to summarize as many of these studies as space allows. No
single study is dispositive, but I hope these summaries can spark some conversations:
Female mammals tend to avoid close male relatives during moments of peak fertility in order to
avoid inbreeding. For the journal Psychological Science, Debra Lieberman, Elizabeth Pillsworth
and Martie Haselton tracked young womens cellphone calls. They found that these women had
fewer and shorter calls with their fathers during peak fertility days, but not with female relatives.
Classic research has suggested that the more people doubt their own beliefs the more,
paradoxically, they are inclined to proselytize in favor of them. David Gal and Derek Rucker
published a study in Psychological Science in which they presented some research subjects with
evidence that undermined their core convictions. The subjects who were forced to confront the
counterevidence went on to more forcefully advocate their original beliefs, thus confirming the
earlier findings.
Physical contact improves team performance. For the journal Emotion, Michael Kraus, Cassey
Huang and Dacher Keltner measured how frequently members of N.B.A. teams touched each
other. Teams that touched each other frequently early in the 2008-2009 season did better than
teams that touched less frequently, even after accounting for player status, preseason
expectations and early season performance.
According to John Gaski and Jeff Sagarin in the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology and
Economics, there is a surprisingly strong relationship between daylight saving time and lower
SAT scores. No explanation was offered.
For an article in The Review of Economics and Statistics, Mark Duggan, Randi Hjalmarsson and
Brian Jacob investigated whether gun shows increase crime rates. They identified 3,400 gun
shows in Texas and California and looked at crime rates for the areas around the shows for the
following month. They found no relationship between gun shows and crime in either state.
Self-control consumes glucose in the brain. For an article in the journal Aggressive Behavior,
Nathan DeWall, Timothy Deckman, Matthew Gaillot and Brad Bushman found that research
subjects who consumed a glucose beverage behaved less aggressively than subjects who drank a
placebo beverage. They found an indirect relationship between diabetes (a disorder marked by

poor glucose toleration) and low self-control. States with high diabetes rates also had high crime
rates. Countries with a different condition that leads to low glucose levels had higher killing
rates, both during wartime and during peacetime.
We tend to admire extroverted leaders. But Adam Grant, Francesca Gino and David Hofmann
have added a wrinkle to this bias in an article in The Academy of Management Journal. They
found that extraverted leaders perform best when their employees are passive, but this effect is
reversed when the employees are proactive. In these cases, the extroverted leaders are less
receptive to their employees initiatives.
Beautiful women should take up chess. Anna Dreber, Christer Gerdes and Patrik Gransmark
wrote a Stockholm University working paper in which they found that male chess players pursue
riskier strategies when theyre facing attractive female opponents, even though the risk-taking
didnt improve their performance.
People remember information that is hard to master. In a study for Cognition, Connor DiemandYauman, Daniel Oppenheimer and Erikka Vaughan found that information in hard-to-read fonts
was better remembered than information transmitted in easier fonts.
Would you rather date someone who dumped his or her last partner or someone who was the
dumpee? For an article in Evolutionary Psychology, Christine Stanik, Robert Kurzban and
Phoebe Ellsworth found that men will give a woman a lower rating when they learn that she
dumped her last boyfriend, perhaps fearing they will be next. But women rated men more highly
when they learned that they had done the dumping, perhaps seeing it as a sign of desirability.
These studies remind us that we are strange, complicated creatures deeply influenced by
primordial biases and our current relationships. But you dont have to settle for my summaries of
these kinds of studies. Go to the National Affairs Web site, where there are links to Kevin
Lewiss daily batch of studies. A day without social science is like a day without sunshine.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 9, 2010
An earlier version of this column inaccurately described diabetes as a disorder marked by low
glucose levels. This language followed the wording of the original study being described which
focused on lower levels of tolerance for glucose in the brain, not low glucose levels in the blood.
Given the complexity of the disease, it is more accurate, in shorthand to describe diabetes as a
disorder marked by poor glucose toleration.