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Submission + - Be nice - Batman is watching! (sciencealert.com)

Black Parrot writes: From ScienceAlert:

A new study has found that people are more likely to act kind towards others when Batman is present â" and not for the reasons you might assume.
[...]
Psychologists from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Italy conducted experiments on the Milan metro to see who, if anyone, might offer their seat to a pregnant passenger.
The kicker? Sometimes Batman was there â" or at least, another experimenter dressed as him. The researchers were checking if people were more likely to give up their seat in the presence of the caped crusader.
And sure enough, there did seem to be a correlation. In 138 different experiments, somebody offered their seat to an experimenter wearing a hidden prosthetic belly 67.21 percent of the time in the presence of Batman.
That's a lot more often than times the superhero wasn't around â" in those cases, a passenger offered a seat just 37.66 percent of the time.
[...]
"Interestingly, among those who left their spot in the experimental condition, nobody directly associated their gesture with the presence of Batman, and 14 (43.75 percent) reported that they did not see Batman at all."

The article goes on to speculate about what is causing people to be more generous.

Comment Re:The domination of the personal device (Score 2) 81

That just means Google is now operating in exactly the same manner that Microsoft used to be when they had dominance over consumer device operating systems. Google now has dominance in the mobile market with Android, and is using that to shove Chrome down people's throats. Personally, the first thing I do with any new phone is download Firefox, just like I did (and still do) with new computers. As the statistics show, though, the vast majority of people don't bother to do that so whatever is the default is what they use. The right and fair thing to do would be to stop them from abusing their monopoly power by offering a choice of browsers at time of install, and not favor their own browser in any way. That would have been the thing to force MS to do as well back when they were being sued for abuse of monopoly power after taking down Netscape with the same tactic. Unfortunately, it didn't happen then and it isn't happening now either. So, Google will continue to dominate the market unless and until some other highly disruptive technology comes along to unseat the current smartphone market and gives another player a chance to enter and eventually dominate the market in a similar fashion.

Comment Re:Company selling (Score 1) 168

I've been asked to create reports that add pounds + gallons, and it's almost impossible to get them to understand why that's nonsense.

Pshaw, that's super easy! 3 pounds plus 6 gallons equals 9.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh. For example, if their boss is an MBA who gives out raises on the basis of how many pounds+gallons they produce or sell, they would be quite rational to request a report that shows how many pounds+gallons they have produced or sold.

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