‘Nuf Said
June 27th, 2011The Winning Touch
June 25th, 2011A study, entitled “Tactile Communication, Cooperation and Performance: An Ethological Study of the NBA,” authored by Michael W. Kraus, Cassy Huang and Dacher Keltner found that good teams touch more often than bad teams.
The researchers reviewed broadcasts from the 2008-2009 basketball season and logged touching, like high-fives. The Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers topped the charts in terms of “touchiness.”
Taking a cue from the study, the Wall Street Journal did their own study of the Heat Mavericks match-up. The results are below.
No surprise that a team that touches more often has also been together for longer, see my earlier post.
Subtle Signs
June 24th, 2011What’s a smile got to do with it? A lot apparently. There are studies that show a subject’s smile in a picture is highly predictive of longevity and even likelihood of divorce.
Abel and Kruger from Wayne State University studied the “smile intensity” of baseball players as depicted in their baseball cards. Those with larger smiles, also known as Duchenne smiles (meaning a full smile where the corners of your mouth are raised and you have creases near your eyes), lived the longest.
Another study done by Matthew Hertenstein from DePauw University measured the smiles of individuals taken from college yearbooks. He found that 31% of the frowners divorced compared to only 11% of those with smiles.
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