Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Women Eye Dance Moves to Find Thrill Seekers

January 24, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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It turns out the information women seek isn’t in a man’s kiss — it’s in his dance moves. Evidence of this nonverbal messaging system comes from a group of European researchers, led by the University of Göttingen’s Nadine Hugill, which videotaped 50 men and their moves. Sixty women watched the recordings and judged the hunkiness of each hoofer. Before hitting the dance floor, the men completed a survey measuring their propensity to engage in new and risky behaviors, including their penchant for “thrill and adventure seeking.” Their willingness to flaunt rules and take ... Read More

Does Black History Need More Than a Month?

January 23, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Last February, Nike marked the annual celebration of all things African American with the limited release of four separate sets of sneakers. To quote from the company’s marketing copy describing the shoe: “The predominantly black upper of this Black History Month Air Force 1 is a nod to the past, because in the early days of the sport of basketball, shoes on the court were almost always black. The hints of gold all around the shoe are reminders of the golden moment we all are striving to achieve.” And here I thought the gold was a subtle reference to the mercenary nature of the slave ... Read More

We’re Sorry: Not All Apologies Are Apologies

January 20, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Variations on “I’m sorry” are playing an increasingly prominent part in our public and private discourse, with figures as diverse as Charlie Sheen and the CEO of BP making widely circulated statements of remorse. In an era of truth commissions, demands for redress of historical grievances, and humiliating revelations of personal indiscretions, apologizing has evolved into a nuanced ritual, one that has attracted the interest of researchers from a variety of disciplines. Some studies provide insights into the effectiveness of apologies and explore the fine line between expressing regret ... Read More

No Debate: Kids Can Learn By Arguing

January 19, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Let’s not “agree to disagree,” says Deanna Kuhn. The Columbia University professor of psychology and education wants to bring back serious debate in America — in sixth grade, if not sooner. Kuhn is tired of hearing that people have a right to their own opinion. It’s too easy to fall into thinking that all opinions are equal, she says, and “so why bother?” The country needs citizens who can make logical arguments “based on substantive claims, sound reasoning, and relevant evidence,” she writes. That’s language from the new educational standards for middle school, adopted ... Read More

Can a Bad Economy Save Your Marriage?

January 18, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Lisa Diamond is one of the few people who has something positive to say about the economy. Sure, a wide range of problems can be attributed to the continuing recession, the University of Utah psychologist concedes — but from her perspective, that’s a good thing. Diamond, whose research focuses on personal relationships, reports financially squeezed spouses who blame the economy for their woes, rather than pointing the finger at their partner, are more likely to be satisfied with their marriages. She discussed her findings, which were published in the journal Personal Relationships, with ... Read More

How Foreclosures Feasted on Some Cities, Not Others

January 17, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Here’s a tale of two cities in Southern California, one that survived the worst of the foreclosure crisis with a few scratches, and one that was badly beaten up. In 2000, Santa Paula, a historic oil town bounded by vast greenbelts of orange, lemon, and avocado groves, had a population of 29,000 and a median household income of $42,000. When the subprime mortgage industry collapsed eight years later, 16 of every 1,000 homes in the “Citrus Capital of the World” went into foreclosure, well below the national average of 22 for every 1,000 homes. Another old town, Lake Elsinore, closely ... Read More

Street Makeovers Put New Spin on the Block

January 16, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

The recession may have robbed city governments of the wherewithal to enhance public places. But some undaunted architects, planners, and community activists are trying urban design experiments that are deliberately cheap, temporary, and unofficial. And sometimes these modest but audacious interventions lead to altered municipal policies and lasting changes in the cityscape. Take an effort called the Better Block, which launched with an unofficial event in Dallas in April 2010. For one weekend, community activists anted up just under $1,000 and used mostly borrowed materials and their own ... Read More

Why Robot Maids Won’t Do the Dishes

January 13, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Examples of Letter A

The following is an excerpt from "The Human Mind," an essay by Steven Pinker that appears in The Harvard Sampler: Liberal Education for the Twenty-First Century. People often think of psychology as the study of the weird, the abnormal, the striking — of prodigies and psychotics, saints and serial killers. But the heart of psychology is the study of pedestrian processes like vision, motor control, memory, language, emotions, concepts, and knowledge of the social world. And the starting point I recommend for appreciating these processes is not the study of extraordinary people; it is not ... Read More

20,000 Robots Under the Sea

January 12, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

If you’re a scientist who wants to study animals in their natural habitats, the process is simple enough: get a pair of binoculars, find a shady spot to sit, and watch the critters. But what if your quarry lives deep in the ocean — and is so tiny it’s barely visible? Jules Jaffe, a research oceanographer at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, thinks he’s got a solution. With the help of a few million dollars in National Science Foundation funding, Jaffe is developing an army of small, networked, underwater robots that will drift ... Read More

Something’s Fishy About That Red Snapper

January 11, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

High-seas fish poaching is more than just a matter of sneaking marine life out of a restricted corner of the ocean; it’s an organized industrial crime that can strip coastal fishing grounds bare and deny even subsistence livelihoods to local fishermen. Foreign ships poaching in African waters, for example, have been a problem for years in Africa, east and west, and the crime fuels piracy, as well as illegal immigration. “The high seas today are like the American Wild West of the 19th century,” said the Pew Environment Group in 2011, “only the bandits are huge factory fishing ... Read More