Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Fame, Once Established, Is Not Fleeting

May 2, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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According to artist Andy Warhol’s much-quoted prophecy, in the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes. In fact, it’s more likely that 0.15 percent of us will have fame for a lifetime. Newly published research concludes that, contrary to Warhol’s prediction, genuine celebrity status does not disappear as quickly as it appeared. Once you become famous, you tend to stay famous. “Fame exhibits strong continuity even in entertainment, on television, and on blogs, where it has been thought to be most ephemeral,” writes a research team led by Stony Brook University ... Read More

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Millennials: A Generation With Unrealistic Expectations

May 1, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Young people coming of age over the past decade or so have been referred to as Millennials, or, in a nod to their individualistic nature, Generation Me. Newly published research suggests they could also be called the generation with unrealistic expectations. An analysis of the values and ambitions of American 12th graders finds “a growing discrepancy between the desire for material rewards and the willingness to do the work usually required to earn them.” Psychologists Jean Twenge of San Diego State University and Tim Kasser of Knox College report that, for high school seniors in ... Read More

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Sports No Longer Last Bastion of Homophobia

April 30, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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So, are sports fans ready to cheer on openly gay players? A body of recent research suggests they are. A number of studies published over the last three years have found a steep decline in homophobic attitudes among both athletes and fans. There’s no question that NBA player Jason Collins took a risk in telling the world, via this week’s Sports Illustrated, that he is gay. But that risk is far less than it would have been even a decade ago. “Research on masculinities and homophobia today shows that, even in the traditionally conservative institution of sport, matters have ... Read More

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Making (Cheap, Monotonous) Online Work More Meaningful

April 29, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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If you’re looking for low-cost labor on the Internet, you would be wise to frame the assignment as something significant. That’s the conclusion of newly published research, which takes the truism that man craves meaning—postulated by psychologist Viktor Frankl in the 1940s, and preached by behavioral economist Dan Ariely today—and applies it to the contemporary practice of online piecemeal work. The more a monotonous Internet project is perceived as meaningful, “the more likely a subject is to participate, the more output they produce, the higher-quality output they produce, ... Read More

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Emotional Reactions of Atheists May Reveal Echoes of Belief

April 26, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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The heads and hearts of atheists may not be on precisely the same page. That’s the implication of recently published research from Finland, which finds avowed non-believers become emotionally aroused when daring God to do terrible things. “The results imply that atheists’ attitudes toward God are ambivalent, in that their explicit beliefs conflict with their affective response,” concludes a research team led by University of Helsinki psychologist Marjaana Lindeman. Its study is published in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. Lindeman and her colleagues ... Read More

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Would You Give Up 9 Months of Your Life for Professional Prestige?

April 25, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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What would you give for a tangible achievement that carries enormous professional prestige? If you’re an economist, and the achievement is a paper published in the American Economic Review, the answer seems to be three-quarters of a year of your life. Or, looking at it a different way, about three-quarters of a thumb. That’s the tentative conclusion of three economists from Erasmus University in the Netherlands. They took an offhand comment by a colleague—“I would give my right arm for a publication in the American Economic Review”—and decided to test whether, for the average ... Read More

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Background Music Reduces Playground Bullying

April 24, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Can music soothe the savage sixth grader? Perhaps, according to a first-of-its-kind study from Israel, which finds that gentle melodies may help deter schoolyard bullying. “If the findings of this pilot study are replicated and can be generalized," researchers Naomi Ziv and Einat Dolev write in the journal Children and Schools, "they point to a very simple, inexpensive method of reducing aggressive behavior.” The three-week experiment featured 56 students—32 boys and 24 girls—at a local elementary school in the north of Israel. All were either 11 or 12 years old. For the ... Read More

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Brainism: Understanding Our Recent Obsession With Stress and the Mind

April 24, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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One Nation Under Stress: The Trouble With Stress as an Idea By Dana Becker (Oxford University Press) Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind By Nikolas Rose and Joelle Abi-Rached (Princeton University Press) “I never used to discuss neuroscience on the bus,” wrote the psychologist Vaughan Bell recently in The Guardian, “but it’s happened twice in the last month.” People these days love to talk about brains. In everyday conversation and mainstream media reports, the organ and its processes are casually invoked (“my synapses are firing”) where ... Read More

More like this: Health, May-June 2013
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Genetic Evidence of Yoga’s Impact on the Immune System

April 23, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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If we’re finished obsessing about yoga jeans, perhaps it’s time to think about yoga and genes. Newly published research from Norway suggests that a comprehensive yoga program rapidly produces internal changes on a genetic level. The results help explain the well-documented health benefits of this ancient practice. “These data suggest that previously reported (therapeutic) effects of yoga practices have an integral physiological component at the molecular level, which is initiated immediately during practice,” writes a research team led by Fahri Saatcioglu of the University of ... Read More

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The Price of Fame for Performers and Athletes: Shorter Lives

April 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Do famous, successful people live longer lives? New research suggests the answer depends upon how they achieved their fame and success. An analysis of 1,000 obituaries from The New York Times finds the average age of death for notable people varies depending upon their occupation. Athletes, performers, and creative types such as writers and artists died younger, on average, while people in business, politics, and the military hung on the longest. “Fame and achievement in performance-related careers may be earned at the cost of a shorter life expectancy,” write Australian researchers ... Read More

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