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GTA V Violence, Coffee Personality Types, Gun Safety Myths, And More In The Week's Most Surprising Studies
Your preferred brand of coffee might be as good as a personality test, one British clinical psychologist is insisting.
After an exhaustive study of 1,000 personality types, cross-referenced with the kind of coffee they drink, Dr Ramani Durvasula developed a system by which you can figure out someone's key traits, just by taking a sip of their coffee — although, let's face it, that'd be pretty awkward.
Are you a fan of lattes? Well, you're probably a people-pleaser, albeit a slightly nervy, neurotic one. (Hey, we didn't say it!) Instant-coffee drinkers tend to procrastinate, but are pretty laid-back. Take a deep breath if your drink of choice is a cappuccino: it points to a type-A, obsessive, perfectionist types. And black coffee lovers are straightforward purists, who hanker after the simple life.
Oh, and if you drink it cold and sweet, then you're likely deeply alternative and edgy. (We're paraphrasing.)
Surprising: Your Caffeine Says A Lot About You
Your preferred brand of coffee might be as good as a personality test, one British clinical psychologist is insisting.
After an exhaustive study of 1,000 personality types, cross-referenced with the kind of coffee they drink, Dr Ramani Durvasula developed a system by which you can figure out someone's key traits, just by taking a sip of their coffee — although, let's face it, that'd be pretty awkward.
Are you a fan of lattes? Well, you're probably a people-pleaser, albeit a slightly nervy, neurotic one. (Hey, we didn't say it!) Instant-coffee drinkers tend to procrastinate, but are pretty laid-back. Take a deep breath if your drink of choice is a cappuccino: it points to a type-A, obsessive, perfectionist types. And black coffee lovers are straightforward purists, who hanker after the simple life.
Oh, and if you drink it cold and sweet, then you're likely deeply alternative and edgy. (We're paraphrasing.)
Image: Getty Images
Obvious: Texts About Bad Behavior Sometimes Leads To Bad Behavior
In a miniature NSA-style experiment, ninth-graders across the board were given phones on the understanding that their texts would be intercepted and read by researchers. (Maybe they were plied with brand-new iPhones?)
Though less than two percent of texts referred to "antisocial behavior" — rule-breaking, talking back to teachers, behaving badly and so on — those who texted about it were, it turns out, more often to engage in said bad-boy behavior than those who texted things like "Hey guys! Anyone want to join a study group?" (Again, we're paraphrasing a little.)
Um. News. Apparently.
Image: Pexels
Surprising: Watching Porn Makes You Less Likely To Support Gender Rights
A preliminary study from Indiana University, though heavily criticized for not being extensive enough, has indicated some controversial news: watching porn might make you less likely to support women's rights.
The researchers asked people if they had watched porn in the last year, and followed up later with both the men and women who answered "yes:" they found that that group showed less interest in women's affirmative-action agencies, regardless of their age, politics, or any other variables. Third-party analysts have linked a lack of support for affirmative action with the bombardment of over-sexualized images of women.
Image: Fotolia
Obvious: Moving Around Is Good For Your Health
We haven't quite figured out how to live forever — Google's still working on that — but researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham were keen to figure out the best way to maintain health as you grow older. The answer? Um... you should move around.
Yup. The best way to stay healthy as you grow older, Alabama's researchers have informed us, is to keep mobile. It's pretty hard for any human to not move around in some form, so we thought that it went without saying... but apparently not.
Image: Fotolia
Surprising: For Tiny Animals, The World Moves In Slow Motion
This is weird, but kind of adorable.
Tiny animals tend to perceive time in slow motion, says an Irish study featured in the journal Animal Behavior. Well, slow motion compared to us, at least, who think of time as fairly quick, mostly because we're the greatest predator on Earth. Feeling that time is moving slower gives little creatures an evolutionary advantage over big ones, because they're more able to process information in a shorter time span, leading to a smaller possibility of their, you know, being eaten.
Getting eaten is less adorable.
Image: Getty Images
Obvious: Guns Don't Make Nations Safer
This staggering piece of new information should forward the gun-control agenda... LOL JK. It's actually kind of obvious that guns do not, repeat do not, make nations safer places to be.
An across-the-board analysis of 27 developed countries has found that there's a strong correlation between gun ownership and firearm deaths: in other words, the more guns there are lying around, the more risk there is of being shot. We prefer to think of this as "logic," but at least we can now call it "science," too.
"This argues against the notion of more guns translating into less crime," said the study's co-author. Glad we've figured that one out!
Image: Pexels
Surprising: Life Sentences Are Getting More Common
A new nationwide examination of life sentences in prison has found that they're getting more common, with a jump of more than ten percent since 2008. That's one in nine inmates serving life, and at least 10,000 of those prisoners are there for crimes that weren't violent.
Other interesting facts from the analysis: racial breakdowns of the data found that 1 in 2 "lifers" are African-American, and 1 in 6 are Latino. Scarily, another 10,000 were sentenced to life in prison for crimes they committed before they were 18.
The rise in life sentencing is particularly weird when you consider that violent crimes have actually declined across the nation in the last two decades. The study explained: The upward creep in life sentences has accelerated in recent decades as an element of the “tough on crime” political environment that began in the 1980s."
Image: Getty Images
Obvious: People With Messy Desks Are More Creative
Don't feel bad about your, quote-unquote, piles of junk everywhere. It's just aiding your natural creativity!
We'll let the title of this University of Minnesota study explain: “Physical Order Produces Healthy Choices, Generosity, and Conventionality, Whereas Disorder Produces Creativity.” OK, our messy desks might not exactly signal a healthy diet, or, um, generosity of nature — thanks, science — but they do prove that we're bloodthirsty creatives, rejoicing in our natural disorder.
Well, yes, the study did point out that orderly people are more efficient and even productive... but us messy-deskers pulled a whole bunch of creative ideas out of the box, which is what counts, right? (Right?)
Image: Fotolia
Surprising: People Who Think They Look Honest Cheat More
This is weird. Three German academics studied some unsuspecting students, telling them that about half of them would be chosen from the batch based on the best test scores. Researchers told some of them that their pictures would be shown to the examiners, whilst telling others that their headshot wouldn't be used.
Those who believed their headshot was part of the application actually cheated more than those who thought otherwise. Which is weird. Maybe they thought that their innocent, honest-looking faces would get them in the door, or maybe they figured that they'd just get away with cheating if they looked like someone you'd trust. Because, really, who thinks "Hmm, my face is really shifty-looking..."?
Image: Fotolia
Obvious: Video Games Don't Turn Kids Violent
Since the dawn of violent video games, their critics having been blaming them for violent behavior — particularly in teenagers, who, the argument goes, can become desensitized and more likely to hurt other people.
Well, it emerges that games that Grand Theft Auto V, while not exactly being a great example nor a boon to women's rights, aren't putting high-risk kids — those considered "high-risk" in the Texas study had attention deficit disorder or depression — on a steady road to violent behavior. Actually, it calmed them down for a while, and they didn't go and immediately punch anyone after putting down the controller.
As we pointed out earlier, violent crimes has declined in the last 20 years — just as video games have exploded into popular culture. So there's that.
Image: Getty Images
