Superstitious behaviours, which arise through the incorrect assignment of cause and effect, receive considerable attention in psychology and popular culture. Perhaps owing to their seeming irrationality, however, they receive little attention in evolutionary biology. Here we develop a simple model to define the condition under which natural selection will favour assigning causality between two events. This leads to an intuitive inequality—akin to an amalgam of...

Background  Anxiety often remains unrecognized or untreated among patients with a chronic illness. Exercise training may help improve anxiety symptoms among patients. We estimated the population effect size for exercise training effects on anxiety and determined whether selected variables of theoretical or practical importance moderate the effect. Methods  Articles published from January 1995 to August 2007 were located using the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans Scientific...

Two laboratory and two randomized field experiments tested a psychological intervention designed to improve students’ scores on high-stakes exams and to increase our understanding of why pressure-filled exam situations undermine some students’ performance. We expected that sitting for an important exam leads to worries about the situation and its consequences that undermine test performance. We tested whether having students write down their thoughts about an...

BackgroundPsychological stress is suggested to accelerate the rate of biological aging. We investigated whether work-related exhaustion, an indicator of prolonged work stress, is associated with accelerated biological aging, as indicated by shorter leukocyte telomeres, that is, the DNA-protein complexes that cap chromosomal ends in cells. MethodsWe used data from a representative sample of the Finnish working-age population, the Health 2000 Study. Our sample consisted of...

BackgroundChronic psychological distress has been linked to shorter telomeres, an indication of accelerated aging. Yet, little is known about relations of anxiety to telomeres. We examined whether a typically chronic form of anxiety – phobic anxiety – is related to telomere length. Methodology/Principal FindingsRelative telomere lengths (RTLs) in peripheral blood leukocytes were measured by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction among 5,243 women (aged 42–69 years)...

This study analyzes the increasing dominance of electronic media in the American media diet and a growing discrepancy between supply and demand in the digital cornucopia. Drawing on the communication flow methodology pioneered by Ithiel Pool in the 1980s, the study tracks U.S. industry data on technology penetration and household behavior from 1960 to 2005 to reveal a transition from “push” to “pull” media dynamics. Neuman,...

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether hospitals where patients report higher overall satisfaction with their interactions among the hospital and staff and specifically their experience with the discharge process are more likely to have lower 30-day readmission rates after adjustment for hospital clinical performance. STUDY DESIGN: Among patients 18 years or older, an observational analysis was conducted using Hospital Compare data on clinical performance, patient satisfaction, and...

BackgroundPatients' perceptions of their care, especially in the hospital setting, are not well known. Data from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey provide a portrait of patients' experiences in U.S. hospitals.MethodsWe assessed the performance of hospitals across multiple domains of patients' experiences. We examined whether key characteristics of hospitals that are thought to enhance patients' experiences (i.e., a high ratio...

Leadership has been found to affect individual and organizational innovation. Use of humor is a characteristic of leadership, and has been identified as a moderator of leadership style and individual or unit-level performance. Yet, the link between use of humor by leaders and employee innovative behavior has not been examined. This study examines the relationships between use of humor by leaders, employee communication, group cohesiveness,...

To explain the pervasive role of humor in human social interaction and among mating partner preferences, Miller (2000a) proposed that intentional humor evolved as an indicator of intelligence. To test this, we looked at the relationships among rater-judged humor, general intelligence, and the Big Five personality traits in a sample of 185 college-age students (115 women, 70 men). General intelligence positively predicted rater-judged humor, independent...