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Eye-catching studies that didn’t make the final cut.

16 December 2010

By Christian Jarrett

Don’t tell Sarkozy: popular politicians are perceived to be taller.

Can you see OK in there? Analysis of uterine conditions suggests that at least some fetuses have enough light to see by. ‘This finding could have intriguing implications for the ontogeny of early visuo-motor abilities in newborns and infants.’

People respond to threat warnings differently depending on whether they refer to natural disasters, terrorism or criminal violence. ‘It appears that the mechanisms for perception, decision-making, and action in response to threats cannot be generalized in a straightforward way across these domains of threat.’

Pull the other one – overly short or long legs are perceived as less attractive, according to a poll of people across no fewer than 27 nations.

Despite what you might think, jurors weren’t biased by the label ‘psychopath’.

English and Mandarin speakers think about time differently.

The dark side of emotional intelligence (EI). ‘We suggest that high-EI people … are likely to benefit from several strategic behaviors in organizations including: focusing emotion detection on important others, disguising and expressing emotions for personal gain, using misattribution to stir and shape emotions, and controlling the flow of emotion-laden communication.’

Smoking affects language lateralisation in the brain, and does so differently for men and women.

Distracting the mind improves performance.

Review of when people get violent during sleep.