The film “Air,” which tells the story of Nike’s signing of Michael Jordan, isn’t actually about Michael Jordan at all. It’s about the beauty of design and the seduction of marketing. It’s about power suits, purple Porsches and Rolexes. It’s about white men languishing through midlife crises who salivate over the branding potential of a...
Culture
Research Shows Coaches Who Lead with Empathy Get More Out of Athletes – and Here’s How
Gone are the days of dictatorial leaders in sport, screaming from the side-lines and insulting their players, and instead we are seeing an era of emotionally intelligent leaders who demonstrate an understanding of other people while getting effective results. The question is, how do you become an empathic leader in elite sports and will it...
Gossip Influences Who Gets Ahead in Different Cultures
Gossip influences if people receive advantages whether they work in an office in the U.S. or in India—or even in a remote village in Africa, a Washington State University study found. In a set of experiments, WSU anthropologists found that positive and negative gossip influenced whether participants were willing to give a person a resource,...
LieLab: The Devil Is in the Details
Figuring out a lie has never been easier: forget body language or how convincing the message is, just listen to how detailed and rich the story is. This is the core of a new approach to lie detection, say researchers from the University of Amsterdam’s Leugenlab (LieLab) in collaboration with researchers from Maastricht University and...
What Distinguishes Fans from Celebrity Stalkers?
A survey study of U.S. college students provides new insights into factors associated with the tendency to engage in celebrity stalking behaviors. Maria Wong (Idaho State University, U.S.), Lynn McCutcheon (North American Journal of Psychology, U.S.), Joshua Rodefer (Mercer University, U.S.) and Kenneth Carter (Emory University, U.S.) present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on...
The Pot at the End of the Rainbow
Bisexuals use cannabis more frequently for coping, enhancement Young people classified as bisexual not only use cannabis more frequently but also are more likely to use it to cope with mental health issues and for what researchers call experiential “enhancement.” A recent study, titled “The Pot at the End of the Rainbow,” is one of...
How Edgar Allan Poe Became the Darling of the Maligned and Misunderstood
Edgar Allan Poe, who would have turned 214 years old on Jan. 19, 2023, remains one of the world’s most recognizable and popular literary figures. His face – with its sunken eyes, enormous forehead and disheveled black hair – adorns tote bags, coffee mugs, T-shirts and lunch boxes. He appears as a meme, either sporting a popped collar and aviator...
E-Commerce Retailers Can Save Money by Considering Pick Failures at Stores
The share of e-commerce retail sales in the United States has grown steadily over the last decade. This trend has been driven by retailers with traditional brick-and-mortar stores adopting online channels to connect to customers. In a new study, researchers explored the world of omnichannel retailing — the merging of in-store and online channels in...
God and Guns Often Go Together in U.S. History – This Course Examines Why
As a religion professor, I’ve come to know many students from other countries who identify as Christian. I realized they were puzzled at some of the things Americans often bundled into their faith – things these international Christians didn’t consider relevant to their own religious identity. One issue in particular sparked a question from a...
Do Accents Disappear?
In Boston, there are reports of people pronouncing the letter “r.” Down in Tennessee, people are noticing a lack of a Southern drawl. And Texans have long worried about losing their distinctive twang. Indeed, around the United States, communities are voicing a common anxiety: Are Americans losing their accents? The fear of accent loss often...