The dog ate your homework. Your alarm clock refused to go off. You really sorry but you have to cancel because...
Planning on telling a fib? Chances are, you'll send a text. Not only can texting be a very risky business, but according to new research by David Xu, assistant professor in the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University, texting is also the easiest way to lie.
The study, which will appear in the March edition of the Journal of Business Ethics, saw 170 students from the Sauder School performing mock stock transactions face-to-face, or by video, audio or text chatting.
It may not come as a surprise that participants were 95 percent more likely to report deception when texting than if they had interacted via video, 31 percent more likely to report deception when compared to face-to-face, and 18 percent more likely if the interaction was via audio chat.
What was surprising, though, was the honesty factor involved in video conferencing, which Xu attributed to the so-called "spotlight" effect in which a person "feels they're being watched more closely" on video than face-to-face.
The findings could prove important in business dealings where new technology like face-time is available for meetings. On a personal level, treat those texts you receive with suspicion. There may well be a white lie lurking between the lines.
Ever texted a porky? Come on, spill it. We won't tell, promise...
As any mom will attest, even the most straightforward delivery of a baby is akin to a scene out of a Wes Craven movie. But here is an amazing birth story to end all amazing birth stories. The tale of a baby born without blood.
Yes, much like this baby, Little Oliver Morgan was miraculously brought back from the brink of death after every drop of blood was drained from his body while in the womb.
Incredibly, even though doctors at Maidstone's General Hospital in England couldn't find a heartbeat for 25 minutes after Oliver was born, they managed to perform a blood transfusion into the still-attached umbilical cord.
Fifteen months later, Oliver is a happy, healthy little lad.
"Oliver's birth was so traumatic that I haven't been able to bring myself to tell his story till now. He was born dead with no blood in his body — but now he's sitting here smiling at me," said 36-year-old mom Katy.
A rare condition known as Vasa Previa meant that an extra vein formed in the womb, and when it burst -- 37½ weeks into Katy's pregnancy -- she awoke covered in blood. His blood.
Fortunately for Katy, Oliver was born by emergency Caesarian while she was anaesthetised and unaware of the unfolding drama that makes E.R. and Gray's look tame by comparison.
Miraculously, Oliver didn't suffer from brain damage in spite of being deprived of oxygen for so long. Doctors pumped expressed breastmilk directly into his stomach.
Just 11 days later, Oliver went home with his mum, dad and brother.
What is it about women getting together, anyway? Men may laugh, but apparently there's a kernel of truth to the lowest common denominator (albeit we now know that gossip is good for you).
A new study by Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute has shown that small-group dynamics -- such as jury deliberations, collective bargaining sessions, and, gasp, cocktail parties -- can effectively 'dumb down' some people, particularly the female of the species.
"You may joke about how committee meetings make you feel brain dead, but our findings suggest that they may make you act brain dead as well," said Read Montague, director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory and Computational Psychiatry Unit at the Virginia Institute.
By placing together individuals with matched IQs, Montague and his team found that collectively their performance in cognitive tasks then dropped. In particular, subjects showed a reduction in their ability to problem-solve -- a little worrying when you consider juries.
While neither age nor ethnicity played a part in the brain response, gender did, however, with female subjects underperforming in group settings.
Researchers weren't clear on whether social pressures were to blame for women's dumbing down in the experiments but that such social dynamics were key in so many facts of society, including on national and international policy-making bodies like the United Nations.
The article appears in the current issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
Do you find yourself dumbing down in small circles?
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