149 questions · 75 sources · 0 syntheses
Human Behavioral Quirks
Curious, humorous studies of everyday human behavior.
Source-derived questions
Questions extracted from the papers in this topic, excluding the curated questions above.
- By what mechanism does navel lint migrate upward from a person's underwear to their belly button?
- How accurately could trained sommeliers detect that a fly had been in their wine?
- How closely did the chickens' preferences track human aesthetic judgments on new images?
- How could the timing of death plausibly respond to financial incentives near a tax law change?
- How did Ariely's team design the experiment to test whether a placebo's stated price affected its pain relief?
- How did Brian Wansink's self-refilling soup bowls work?
- How did Donald Unger design his decades-long self-experiment to test whether knuckle-cracking causes arthritis?
- How did Geim and Novoselov actually isolate a single-atom-thick sheet of carbon?
- How did John Senders measure how much visual attention driving actually requires?
- How did Mennella and Beauchamp determine that flavour compounds from a mother's diet reach breast milk?
- How did Pettersson trace the problem back through the town's plumbing rather than blaming the shampoo?
- How did Richard Wassersug and colleagues actually measure tadpole palatability?
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- How did Sreekumar and Nirmalan derive a formula for an elephant's total surface area from a few measurable dimensions?
- How did Weijmar Schultz and colleagues use MRI to study human anatomy during intercourse?
- How did a ring of postage stamps work as a diagnostic test for nocturnal erections?
- How did ancient Greek sculpture reflect anatomical knowledge that modern medicine had overlooked for centuries?
- How did human saliva compare to distilled water and commercial cleaning solutions in controlled tests?
- How did illness show up in the pattern of Bean's recorded nail-growth data?
- How did prolonged kissing reduce allergic skin responses in patients with eczema and hay fever?
- How did researchers measure a film's emotional arc through air chemistry alone?
- How did researchers measure and compare the jump heights of dog fleas versus cat fleas?
- How did researchers measure cardiac synchrony between speed-dating participants who felt mutual attraction?
- How did researchers measure imitation between chimpanzees and zoo visitors in both directions?
- How did researchers measure the effect of viewing beautiful versus ugly paintings on perceived pain?
- How did researchers test whether roller coasters help dislodge kidney stones?
- How did researchers test whether socks worn over shoes prevent slipping on ice?
- How did researchers train chickens to distinguish attractive from unattractive human faces?
- How did the Keele University team measure whether swearing reduces pain?
- How did the University of Amsterdam researchers establish misophonia as a distinct psychiatric condition?
- How did the involvement of household animals complicate the reattachment surgeries?
- How did the researchers induce and measure itch and scratch satisfaction on the ankle, forearm, and back?
- How did two independent teams end up reporting the same unusual remedy?
- How do electrified chopsticks and straws make food taste saltier without adding salt?
- How does cheese aversion differ from an ordinary, contextual food dislike?
- How does the enzyme in Beano prevent gas-producing fermentation before it starts?
- How does urethra scaling keep flow rate proportional to bladder volume?
- How long did Robert Tools survive after receiving the first self-contained artificial heart?
- How long did it take NASA to pay the littering fine, and who eventually covered it?
- How long did nasal relief from orgasm last compared to a decongestant spray?
- How many deaths and injuries did Peter Barss document from falling coconuts in Papua New Guinea?
- How many episodes of nose-picking per day did most survey respondents report?
- How many people believed they held the winning bottle cap, and what happened as a result?
- How many practitioners did the study of sword-swallowing injuries survey?
- How many scientific papers did Yuri Struchkov publish between 1981 and 1990?
- How many short papers did Trinkaus publish over the course of his research?
- How much does ear length actually increase per year in adults, according to Heathcote's measurements?
- How much more did lap dancers earn in tips during their fertile window compared to during menstruation?
- How much more soup did people eat from the self-refilling bowls, and did they feel fuller?
- How was the body louse confirmed as the vector responsible for spreading typhus?
- How well could participants in Giacomin and Rule's study identify narcissism from eyebrows alone?
- What biochemical mechanism might explain why an acidic, carbonated drink could affect sperm motility?
- What brain mechanism might explain why looking at a beautiful painting reduces pain intensity?
- What causes individual plant cells to spontaneously polarize their PIN transporters without an external directional cue?
- What changes in infant feeding behaviour were observed after mothers ate garlic?
- What chemical compounds did the Shiseido research team identify as responsible for foot odor?
- What clinical approach did Nolan, Stillwell, and Sands establish for treating zipper entrapment injuries?
- What compound spiked in cinema air during tense movie scenes?
- What concerns did Struchkov's publication rate raise about how science measures productivity?
- What correlation did Stack and Gundlach find between country music radio play and suicide rates?
- What correlation did Watkins's team find between a country's income inequality and how often its people kiss romantically?
- What design principles for shoe racks did the study suggest might reduce odour buildup?
- What did Barss recommend to reduce coconut-related head trauma?
- What did Chris McManus's study find about the asymmetry of the human scrotum?
- What did Ivette Bassa's blue Jell-O experiment reveal about food color and perceived edibility?
- What did Karl Kruszelnicki's survey find about who accumulates the most navel lint?
- What did Marazziti's study compare between newly infatuated people and OCD patients?
- What did Unger find when he compared his cracked and uncracked hands after sixty years?
- What did William B. Bean's thirty-five-year daily record reveal about how fingernail growth changes with season and age?
- What did brain imaging reveal about whether cheese aversion is psychological or neurological?
- What did the 200-adolescent survey by Andrade and Srihari find about the prevalence of nose-picking?
- What did the study conclude about the statistical relationship between height, foot size, and penile length?
- What did the study conclude about the symmetry of nasal hair distribution between nostrils?
- What did the two honoured studies on Coca-Cola's contraceptive properties actually conclude, and how did they contradict each other?
- What does rebound pain over speed bumps indicate about peritoneal inflammation?
- What does the finding suggest about the physiological, rather than metaphorical, nature of romantic attraction?
- What does the finding suggest about whether human ovulation is truly 'concealed' or gives off subtle cues to others?
- What does this experiment reveal about how the brain combines sound, texture, and smell to construct the experience of taste?
- What does this finding suggest about the biological versus cultural basis of human beauty standards?
- What emotions do people typically signal when they sigh, according to Teigen's research?
- What enzyme in saliva breaks down grime on artwork, and how does it work?
- What explanation did the researchers propose for why country music lyrics might affect listeners in distress?
- What eyebrow features were the strongest signal of higher narcissism scores?
- What factors did Kumar and Mittal's engineering analysis identify as affecting how shoe odours spread on a shoe rack?
- What folklore claim did Jerald Bain and Kerry Siminoski set out to test with actual measurement?
- What happened when the researchers tried to cut with the knives they made?
- What is Otodectes cynotis, and why did Robert Lopez want to know what an infestation felt like firsthand?
- What is a gynosome, and how does the female Neotrogla use it during mating?
- What is misophonia, and what sounds most commonly trigger it?
- What is the Schmidt Pain Index and how does it rank insect stings?
- What is the hypoalgesic effect of swearing and what causes it?
- What is the likely mechanism by which cured, salted pork stopped uncontrolled nasal bleeding?
- What kind of material does the American Nudist Research Library preserve?
- What kind of research does the Ig Nobel Biology prize typically single out?
- What kinds of everyday behaviors did John Trinkaus spend four decades cataloguing?
- What kinds of injuries did Witcombe and Meyer's survey of sword swallowers document?
- What made Trinkaus's statistical approach to petty annoyances scientifically serious despite its subject matter?
- What made the postage stamp test appealing compared to laboratory-based diagnostic methods?
- What method did Yagyu's team use to measure the brain's response to different gum flavours?
- What neurological fingerprint did researchers find in the brains of people with misophonia?
- What pattern did Slemrod and Kopczuk find in death records around changes to the US estate tax?
- What physiological mechanism explains why orgasm relieves nasal congestion?
- What problem was Hyuk-ho Kwon's self-perfuming suit designed to solve?
- What prompted a general practitioner to investigate a question as casual as whether older men have bigger ears?
- What public health problem is this electric taste technology meant to address?
- What question about nasal hair did Christine Pham's cadaver study set out to answer?
- What real-world implications does the price-placebo effect have for how medicines are marketed and prescribed?
- What surgical problem prompted Thai hospitals in the 1970s to develop a systematic reattachment technique?
- What symptoms did Lopez record after transferring feline ear mites into his own ear canal?
- What temperature asymmetry did Mieusset and Bengoudifa find between the left and right sides of the scrotum?
- What unusual technique did Fesmire find could stop intractable hiccups?
- What variables did the 1992 study control for when testing this correlation?
- What was the original 1998 anthropological claim about an Inuit hunter and a knife made of frozen faeces?
- What was the subject of Jim Knowlton's anatomical chart that won the Ig Nobel Art prize?
- What went wrong with Pepsi-Cola Philippines' 1992 number-matching lottery?
- When did complications spike among the sword swallowers surveyed?
- Where did Skylab's debris land, and what was the Esperance council's response?
- Which body site did bin Saif and colleagues find was both the itchiest and most satisfying to scratch?
- Which type of dung did the beetles in the Kuwait study favor most?
- Why are people more suspicious of foods colored outside the natural palette?
- Why can a falling coconut cause a serious head injury given the tree's typical height and fruit weight?
- Why can nocturnal erections during REM sleep help distinguish physical from psychological impotence?
- Why did Marc Mitchell suspect that roller coaster rides could help patients pass kidney stones?
- Why did researchers ask appendicitis patients about pain over speed bumps on the way to hospital?
- Why did standard treatments fail to stop the nosebleeds of a patient with Glanzmann's thrombasthenia?
- Why did the Ig Nobel committee consider a paper on zipper injuries worth honoring seriously?
- Why did the Ig Nobel committee frame the Pepsi 349 fiasco as a form of solidarity?
- Why did the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts decline to fund Knowlton's proposed pop-up-book edition?
- Why did the mayor of Vilnius drive an armoured personnel carrier over a parked Mercedes?
- Why did the rear of the train pass stones at a higher rate than the front car?
- Why did the researchers choose French postmen as their study subjects?
- Why did volunteers report more pain relief from the identical sugar pill when told it cost more?
- Why do listeners tend to interpret someone else's sigh as sadness when the sigher meant frustration?
- Why does bladder-emptying time stay roughly constant across mammals of wildly different sizes?
- Why does ear cartilage keep lengthening throughout life while bone growth stops?
- Why does knowing an animal's surface area matter for veterinary drug dosing and heat exchange calculations?
- Why does no other dataset like Bean's exist in the biological literature on nail growth?
- Why does scratching a mirror-reflected arm reduce the itch on the actual, unreachable arm?
- Why does stimulating the vagus nerve interrupt the hiccup reflex?
- Why does tadpole palatability matter for evolutionary ecology and predator deterrence?
- Why does the brain process peppermint and fruit flavours differently in the first place?
- Why does the library represent a genuine act of cultural custodianship?
- Why does the warm, humid environment of a shoe encourage odor-producing bacteria?
- Why have museum conservators long used a moistened fingertip to clean old paintings and sculptures?
- Why is mapping the itch-scratch relief cycle relevant to treating chronic itch conditions?
- Why is scrotal temperature asymmetry relevant to sperm production and fertility?
- Why might romantic kissing function as a mate-assessment tool when the stakes of choosing a partner are higher?
- Why was identifying the exact compounds behind foot odor practically useful for cosmetics companies?
- Why was the clinical guide considered a genuinely serious and useful contribution despite its unusual subject?
- Why was the pain-relief effect weaker among habitual swearers?
Sources
- Modeling the emergence of polarity patterns for the intercellular transport of auxin in plants
- First self-contained artificial heart implanted
- Ig Nobel Prize in Anatomy
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