Stool pigeons, clothing-shopping clothing, and the dark attitudes of people who tan themselves in tanning beds — these are the things that turn up in this week’s Improbable Research podcast.
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This week, Marc Abrahams —with dramatic readings by Jean Berko Gleason — tells about:
- Self-control by pigeons. (“Self-Control by Pigeons in the Prisoner’s Dilemma,” Forest Baker and Howard Rachlin, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, vol. 9, no. 3, September 2002, pp. 482-8.
- Clothing to wear when you go shopping for clothing. “Customer Service as a Function of Shopper’s Attire,” Pamela C. Regan and Veronica Llamas, Psychological Reports, vol. 90, no. 1, February 2002, pp. 203-4.
- The dark, anti-people attitudes of people who use tanning beds. “Why Do Young Women Use Sunbeds? A Comparative Psychological Study,” B. Fiala, M. Kopp, and V. Gunther, British Journal of Dermatology, vol. 137, no. 6, December 1997, pp. 950-4.
The mysterious John Schedler or the shadowy Bruce Petschek perhaps did the sound engineering this week.
The Improbable Research podcast is all about research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK — real research, about anything and everything, from everywhere —research that may be good or bad, important or trivial, valuable or worthless. CBS distributes it, on the CBS Play.it web site, and on iTunes and Spotify).