According to a recent study by Solutions Research Group, 37% of laptop users (and would-be better lovers) bring the contraptions into bed. Work productivity increases (good) at the cost of sexy time between nighttime companions (wait, bad! not worth it!).
The obvious takeaway: do not allow gadgets between the sheets. Unless, you know, it’s that kind of gadget.
Apparently the heart is more resilient than we all give it credit for. At least that’s according to a new study from Northwestern University.
Eli Finkel, assistant professor of psychology, studied college students over a nine-month period and discovered that on average people who are anticipating what their breakup will be like grossly overestimate their level of distress. He says that is especially true of those who are strongly in love when they make their forecasts.
“So those people are especially wrong,” said Finkel. “They think they are going to be devastated, and they are much less devastated than they thought.”
It turns out, in most cases it only takes a few days for us — men and women alike (the study revealed no difference in sex) — to start focusing on all the bad things that annoyed us about our partners. And in our minds we start exaggerating how terrible those things were. (Like how much he hated your cat. There’s something seriously wrong with a man who can hate a little tiny, sweet kitty THAT much. Seriously. No really, you’re better off without him.)
Though to be fair, the study does go on to say that the same is true of many dreaded human experiences. We anticipate that many things — surgery, a trip to the DMV — will be much worse than they actually are.
No, wait, sorry. The DMV will actually be worse than you imagined.
Here’s another study for you: the latest research suggests that people who are in love with their partners are less attracted to other people. Where was that data collected, University of the Obvious? Published in the academic journal Duh?
Well, from a broad psychological standpoint, this conclusion is apparently not that obvious. Because our default setting, as humans, is “instant gratification.” Nationally, constitutionally, and gubernatorially, we are not champions of self-restraint. So why should lust, even in the context of presumed monogamy, be any different? Or, as The Raw Story put it: “Why do people in stable relationships so often pass up the chance for a little sexual gratification on the side, even if they can get away with it?”
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And I don’t just mean they finish building the loft first. I mean that according to a Harvard study published in the new issue of the journal Nature, among 100 college students asked to play about 8000 rounds of game-theory-gasmic “prisoners’ dilemma,” using dimes, those who less often meted out “punishment” came out ahead. Those who “punished” the most wound up with the least money; to the the “co-operators” went the spoils.
This is impressive to me, given that having to play 8000 rounds of prisoner’s dilemma with only dimes at stake would make me want to punish someone. Of course, it was Yahoo, and not Harvard, who concluded from this data — despite the fact that study subjects were male and female — that “Nice Guys Finish First,” but hey. We like nice; thought you might like to know!