recent research

Posting a "this week's picks" from Kevin Lewis' blog - which is actually from a week in September 2012:

• Groups behave more like Homo Economicus than do individual humans. (Gary Charness)
• A theory to explain why humans are so egalitarian: it paid our ancestors to band together against bullies. (Sergey Gavrilets)
• Laughter brings people together - and may be the reason why humans could form larger groups (than our primate relatives). (Guillaume Dezecache)
• Extroverts may impress initially, but Neurotics end up surpassing expectations. (Corinne Bendersky)
• Not entirely sure what's going on here - but it looks like researchers are crowdsourcing research. (Josh Bongard)
• Humans just might be the only species that punish free-riders. (Katrin Riedl)
• Observing cultural traits build - in the laboratory. (Christina Matthews)
• Also in the lab - individuals get a buzz from "group" success, even if they get no actual payoff themselves. (Maxwell Burton-Chellew)
• Direct voting and deliberation help to legitimize decisions - at least with high school kids. (Mikael Persson)
• Feeling out of control can make one clingy and cliquey. (Immo Fritsche) And prefer autocrats. (David Rast)
• We're all trying to convince others (and ourselves) - until others understand us. (Nadira Faulmuller)
• We play nice - as long we know others can drop us in games. (Jing Wang)