Blogging requires a curiosity for odd facts, and a passion for reading and writing. This blog is a terrific outlet for our curious selves, where we can spend time monitoring new research and current events, and share it with you. Usually, the items are meaty enough to form a blogpost on the issue. Sometimes, though, we find random factoids that we think you might want to know about and we save them for days like today. Think of these as delectable tidbits of information that bring a smile or a ‘hmmm’ to your day. Or as our Cajun friends would say, “lagniappe”. Enjoy.

Red lipstick and tipping behavior:

You likely recall our posts on wearing red (for both men and women) and the advantage in represents for how others see you. Here’s another twist to that research. Heterosexual men tip more when their waitress is wearing red lipstick! Adding credence to their finding–the research was conducted in France where tips are already included in the total bill, and tipping is not routinely expected. Thus, extra tipping is unusual. And here we find that waitresses with red lipstick got the bonus tips, and waitresses wearing other shades went without. We have no suggestions for any lesson for litigators with this news, but you might want to let your friends who are waitresses know about this. Also note– there is no current indication on what the tipping effect is for men who wear red lipstick. But we’re guessing that in most restaurants it isn’t nearly as helpful.

Is gaydar real?

We’ve blogged about gaydar before but the research on it keeps coming. [Did we need more research?] The Atlantic recently ran an article on the ability of college students to guess sexual orientation after 50 milliseconds to look at a photo of a face. And their accuracy was above chance even when the faces were upside down! It turns out that facial features, pupil dilation, and even right-brain or left-brain orientation has been found to accurately predict sexual orientation–although apparently it’s a bit more straightforward to predict in men than it is in women. (And a co-author of the pupil dilation study even claims their findings could be “used to help people who are confused about their sexuality sort through their desires”. Oy. We wish researchers wouldn’t say things like that. And there is no reason whatsoever for you to search out photos of the authors.)

What percentage of water on their fur can dogs shake off in 4 seconds?

That would be 70%. Now that is news you can use. For something. The Atlantic (again) brings us need-to-know information complete with a video of a wet canine shaking off wetness. Surprisingly, there is not a flexible spine to account for how efficiently dogs shake off water. It has to do with how loose the dog’s skin is and (again thanks to the Atlantic) that loose skin isn’t just so dogs look funny here.

Staying in the ICU? How many medical errors occur there anyway?

Let’s just say you want to avoid the ICU whenever possible. According to the Johns Hopkins Patient Safety Team:

Each year as many as 40,500 critically ill U.S. hospital patients die with an unknown medical condition that may have caused or contributed to their death. In a discussion of their findings, researchers say that diagnostic errors in the intensive care unit (ICU) may claim as many lives each year as breast cancer.

The actual numbers are staggering. Misdiagnosis in ICU patients is as much as 50% more common than it is in general hospital patients. In the US, about half of all deaths occur in hospitals and half of hospital deaths occur either in the ICU or immediately following ICU stays. In fairness, it isn’t called an “Emergency Room” or “Intensive Care Unit” for nothing. But this study controls for life threatening presenting problems (like massive heart attacks and gun shots), and deals with diagnostic errors. You can see a user-friendly interpretation of the study at the Atlantic.

If you walk with a swagger, are you narcissistic?

Maybe. And maybe not. Research Digest recently cited a study looking at how we interpret the personality of someone based on how they walk. That is, we see an expansive, loose walking style as related to adventurousness, extraversion, trustworthiness and warmth while a slow and relaxed walking style was associated with being neurotic. According to the personality questionnaires completed by the walkers, however, their style of walking was not correlated with their personality–but it was in the minds of the observers. We see this sort of assumption operating in our mock juror observations of witnesses. They look at witnesses or parties and “see” drug abuse, liars, conspiracy, jealousy and much more. It isn’t that those negatives are there in truth–but they are there in the minds of the observer.

So. Just because you walk with a swagger or a strut doesn’t really mean you are truly a narcissist–but if you’re being observed by someone prone to sensitivity to that trait, you could get tagged with it. Not sure what you should do about it, but don’t be surprised. People are constantly judging…

Nicolas Guéguen, & Céline Jacob (2012). Lipstick and tipping behavior: When red lipstick enhances waitresses tips. International Journal of Hospitality Management DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhm.2012.03.012

Rieger G, & Savin-Williams RC (2012). The eyes have it: Sex and sexual orientation differences in pupil dilation patterns. PLoS ONE, 7 (8) PMID: 22870196

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