My picks from ScienceDaily

Watching Television, Channeling Unhappiness?:

Are happy or unhappy people more attracted to television? This question is addressed by a new 30-year analysis1 of US national data of nearly 30,000 adults by John Robinson and Steven Martin from the University of Maryland in the US. Examining the activity patterns of happy and less happy people in the General Social Survey (GSS) between 1975 and 2006, the authors found that happy people were more socially active, attended more religious services, voted more and read more newspapers.

Risky Decision-making Essential To Entrepreneurialism, Scientists Conclude:

Whether someone will become the next Richard Branson, Steve Jobs or Henry Ford may be down to whether they make risky decisions, scientists at the University of Cambridge have concluded.

Those Were The Days: Counteracting Loneliness With Nostalgia:

With the days getting shorter (and colder) and the Holidays quickly approaching, many of us start thinking back to days gone by. This sentimentality and desire for the past is known as nostalgia. All of us are struck with nostalgic feelings from time to time but a new study in Psychological Science indicates that nostalgia may serve a greater purpose than just taking us back to the good old days.

Decisions, Decisions: Feedback Influences Decision Making:

Every day we are faced with a multitude of choices, but the majority of these fall into two categories: descriptive choice (based on what we are told) and experiential choice (based on our own personal experience). An example of these choices would be deciding whether or not to wear a helmet while cycling. If we are told that wearing a helmet is for our safety, then choosing to wear one or not would be a descriptive choice. However, if instead we see that our friends never wear helmets and that they have never been hurt, then choosing to wear one or not would be an experience-based choice.

Sweepstakes Are For The Lucky, Not Every Customer, Researchers Say:

Many methods and strategies can be used to promote sales in addition to simply lowering price. One strategy, the "lucky draw," entitles all buyers to be entered in a drawing for some valued commodity. Using a test that probed consumers' beliefs in luck, Gerard Prendergast and Edmund Thompson investigated the question of who the best prospects are for "lucky draw" in their article appearing in the journal Psychology & Marketing.