Improbable Research

Valentine’s Day always brings the question “Can you catch a cold by kissing?” A 1984 experiment gave this answer: “Casual social encounters or kisses between infected and susceptible individuals are probably unlikely to result in the transmission of rhinoviruses.”

Here’s kissing data from the experiment. The citation and further quotations appear below it.

From New Scientist’s Feedback column:

HAVE you wondered why manufacturers have taken to adding scents to more and more consumer products – including car tyres (28 March 2009)? If so, a study in the US Journal of Consumer Research, has this answer: “Product scent may be particularly effective at enhancing memory for product information as a function of its ability to enhance a product’s distinctiveness within its surrounding context.”

Shorn of its clunky language, what this means is that if products have a smell you’re likely to remember them better. That makes sense to us. We always make a point of remembering which products are scented so we’ll be sure never to buy them again.

Income and orgasms are statistical food for thought, thanks to Pollet and Nettle:

“Partner Wealth Predicts Self-Reported Orgasm Frequency in a Sample of Chinese Women,” Thomas V. Pollet and Daniel Nettle, Evolution and Human Behavior, vol. 30, no. 2, March 2009, pp. 146-151. (Thanks to Ig Nobel Prize winner Francis Fesmire for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at Newcastle University, report:

“We investigated the relationship between women’s self-reported orgasm frequency and the characteristics of their partners in a large representative sample from the Chinese Health and Family Life Survey. We found that women report more frequent orgasms the higher their partner’s income is.”

This three-minute video, which focuses on sheep and politicians, is a good tool for classroom discussions and experiments in the field of abnormal psychology. [NOTE: Students should be informed that the video was designed and is being used for a different sort of experiment — a campaign advertisement in which one one candidate is attacking another. Both candidates aspire to be governor of the American state of California.]

Sari and Berger helped erase the deficit in knowledge about the underclothing microclimate:

“A New Dynamic Clothing Model. Part 2: Parameters of the Underclothing Microclimate,” Hayet Sari and Xavier Berger, International Journal of Thermal Sciences, vol. 39, no. 6, June 2000, pp. 684-92. (Thanks to Lisabeth Ng for bringing this to our attention.)

Which body parts do students pay attention to when they size up their rivals in romance? Pieternel Dijkstra and Bram Buunk went to a university library to find the answer. They handed out survey forms to students who were there studying books or studying each others’ body parts.

A monograph called Sex Differences in the Jealousy-Evoking Nature of a Rival’s Body Build, published in 2001 in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, tells what Dijkstra and Buunk learned from this endeavour. The two psychologists, based at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, begin by summarising the state of knowledge in their field. Everyone’s ultimate goal: clear up the mysteries of romantic rivalry and jealousy….

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.