Recent Science News

Old-fashioned fonts make products seem safer, even when shoppers are told they are not
Across seven studies, vintage typography made products from bikes to cosmetics seem safer, lifting brand attitudes, purchase intent and willingness to pay; with a vintage font, a product described as having unsafe ingredients was rated as safe as one with no safety information at all.

Readers rated ChatGPT’s advice above professional advice columnists, yet 77% still wanted a human
In two preregistered surveys of about 400 people each, ChatGPT's answers to real advice-column dilemmas were judged more balanced, complete, empathetic and helpful than the columnists' own, even at equal length, but most participants still preferred a human to answer their own problems.

Nonprofit hospitals spent $7.8 billion on consultants with no measurable gains
Nonprofit hospitals that hired management consultants paid $15.7 million on average, $7.8 billion in total from 2009 to 2023, yet 306 of them showed no significant change in revenue, margins, operations or patient outcomes against 513 matched hospitals.

A Batman on the Milan metro nearly doubled the share of riders giving up their seat
When a person dressed as Batman boarded a Milan metro car, passengers offered their seat to a seemingly pregnant woman 67% of the time, against 38% without him. Of those who helped while Batman was present, 44% said they had not seen him.

Twenty minutes into a task, our minds are wandering about half the time
Pooling raw data from 68 studies and more than 10,000 people, researchers found the odds of drifting off-task rose about 6% every minute, so that by the 20th minute people were off-task roughly 49% of the time.

College students’ average IQ has slid to about 102, meta-analysis of 106 samples finds
A meta-analysis of 106 student samples tested with Wechsler IQ tests since 1939 finds undergraduates' average IQ has fallen by about 0.2 points a year to roughly 102, close to the population average of 100.

Sniffing women’s tears cut men’s aggression by 43.7% in a lab game
Men who sniffed odorless emotional tears from women retaliated 43.7% less in a provocation game than after sniffing saline. Tears activated four human smell receptors and changed activity in brain areas linking smell and aggression.