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Are babies born bullies? Not exactly. But they may understand the concept
A new UBC study suggests that infants as young as nine months respond to a puppet they prefer teasing a puppet they don’t like. Does that make a baby a bully? Maybe not, but the implications for studying social development are myriad.
[Photo credit: 20th Century Fox]

Stop signs cause more harm than good, some experts say
The red octagonal sign is among the most recognizable features of a car-centred society, but drivers have a complex relationship with the ubiquitous STOP sign, one rooted in human nature and behavioural psychology.

There is a growing movement, in fact, to do away with stop signs altogether.

“As a whole, signs are not particularly powerful determinants of behaviour,” said U.K. traffic consultant Ben Hamilton-Baillie. “I’ve never seen anyone light up a cigarette in a church, but I’ve also never seen a sign that says ‘no smoking.’ There’s a powerful, socially determined cue going on there.” (Photo: Darren Calabrese/National Post)

Bad baby name could leave your child sadder, dumber: study
A poorly chosen baby name can lead to a lifetime of neglect, reduced relationship opportunities, lower self-esteem, a higher likelihood of smoking and diminished education prospects, according to a new study of nearly 12,000 people.

The research, which appears in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, is thought to offer the firmest conclusions to date that “unfortunate” first names evoke negative reactions from strangers, which in turn influence life outcomes for the worse.

“There seems to be prejudice based on name valence [or associations],” says study co-author Wiebke Neberich, previously of the International Max Planck Research School.

“It’s a mostly unconscious process where all the associations we have with a particular name will pop up: [associations] from the newspapers, from stories and, of course, from our own history.”

In one of the researchers’ experiments, online daters whose names carried the most positive valence (Alexander) received 102% more profile visits, relative to opportunity, than daters whose names carried the worst valence (Kevin). (Photo: Sebastian Kahnert/AFP/Getty Images)

Only planet: Why one child is often enough
For about 30 years, social psychologist Susan Newman has been smashing down the stereotypes people lob at only children. They’re spoiled, lonely, bossy — they even talk funny, apparently. In her new book, The Case for the Only Child: Your Essential Guide, Newman reviews more than a century’s worth of research on only children. Speaking by phone from her New Jersey home, Newman says many people don’t realize how consistent the findings are: “We’ve been brainwashed to believe that every child needs a sibling. And the research shows that that’s just not true. Only children turn out just as well, or develop just as well, as other children.” (Illustration by Steve Murray)

Spoiler alert: Why knowing the ending isn’t always a bad thing
Bruce Willis is dead. Edward Norton is Tyler Durden. Clint Eastwood pulls the plug: As annoying as it can be, finding out how films end may not be such a downer after all. According to research carried out at UC San Diego, spoilers may actually enhance our enjoyment.

Nicholas Christenfeld, a professor of psychology at the California university, and his student Jonathan Leavitt recently tested the effect of spoilers using short stories, and their results will be published in the upcoming issue of Psychological Science. The study had three groups of participants: one that read the stories unaltered, one that read versions of the stories that had spoilers embedded in them, and one that was given a spoiler paragraph before they even started the story.

Although the embedded paragraph had no effect, it turns out that the subjects who knew how the stories would end before picking them up enjoyed them the most.

“The margin’s small,” says Christenfeld, referring to enjoyment numbers. “It’s not a huge effect — it’s not the case that you make people indifferent or ecstatic with spoilers. But, there’s a significant uptick in pleasure on the 10-point scale. … And [participants are] reading the exact same story, so any movement is interesting, and of course, this is in the opposite direction from what you’d expect.”

Does hiding baby’s sex engender freedom or cross the line?
It is nothing if not an unorthodox approach to child rearing: A Toronto couple says it is trying to raise a genderless child, refusing to reveal baby Storm’s sex to encourage a more neutral approach to the infant.

Hiding the four-month-old’s sex from the outside world is a “tribute to freedom and choice” that they hope will let Storm grow up unfettered by the values of others, Kathy Witterick and David Stocker have been quoted as saying.

Experts, however, question whether the odd experiment will work or be good for the baby, and note that gender identity is a complex, mysterious force that has at least as much to do with biological factors present at birth as the person’s social interactions. (Photo illustration: James McMurtrie/Getty Images/Thinkstock)

Barbara Kay: A child’s biology is not a matter of choice