Improbable Research

In this Pocket-Sized episode #1027, Marc Abrahams shows an unfamiliar research study to Jean Berko Gleason. Dramatic readings and reactions ensue.

The research mentioned in this episode is featured in the special Psychology issue (vol. 26, #1) of the Annals of Improbable Research magazine.

Remember, our Patreon donors, on most levels, get access to each podcast episode before it is made public.

1. Jean Berko Gleason encounters:

“The Social Contingency of Momentary Subjective Well-Being,”  Robb B. Rutledge, Archy O. de Berker, Svenja Espenhahn, Peter Dayan, and Raymond J. Dolan, Nature Communications, vol. 7, no. 11825, 2016.

Seth Gliksman, Production Assistant

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Google Podcasts, AntennaPod, BeyondPod and elsewhere!

This historic Ig Nobel Favorite Moment video stars Glenda Browne, Ig Nobel Literature Prize winner, for her study of the word “the” — and of the many ways that word causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order.

Thanks to Jenny Browne as a guest voice and Jon Jermey.

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK.

The 30th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will be webcast September 17, 2020 at www.improbable.com.

Coordinator, Narrator, & Typist: Seth Gliksman

This historic Ig Nobel Favorite Moment video stars Kees Moeliker, Ig Nobel Biology Prize winner for documenting homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck. Guest appearance: Sezen Moeliker.

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK.

And for those of a more Dutch inclination:

The 30th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will be webcast September 17, 2020 at www.improbable.com.

Coordinator, Narrator, & Typist: Seth Gliksman

Scholars continue to study some of the many men who send out pictures of bits of themselves. A new study and a new book stand out. The book was written by a man who sends out copies of his book about studying men who send out pictures of bits of themselves.

A Study to Study

The study is: “I’ll Show You Mine so You’ll Show Me Yours: Motivations and Personality Variables in Photographic Exhibitionism,” Flora Oswald, Alex Lopes, Kaylee Skoda, Cassandra L. Hesse, and Cory L. Pedersen, Journal of Sex Research, vol. 57, no. 5, 2020, pp. 597-609. (Thanks to Sarah Larsen for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at Pennsylvania State University, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, and The University of British Columbia, explain:

“The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in the motivations, personality aspects, and sexualities of men who send unsolicited genital images relative to men who do not send such images. Within our sample of 1,087 heterosexual males, 48% (n = 523) confirmed that they had engaged in sending unsolicited dick pics, suggesting that this behavior is common amongst heterosexual men…. [Our] findings are consistent with previous literature indicating that men often send such images in the hopes that the recipients will be turned on by the images and reciprocate the behavior.”

A Book to Look At

The book is: The Fine Art of Dick Pics and Selfies, Jeremy Bell, brotherhogarth [publishers], 2020, ISBN 099883422X

BONUS: The author will play a small but vital role in the 30th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony.

The painting, by Ragnar Sandberg (1902–1972) entitled Chicken Handler (Hönsskötären , 1937), depicts a farmer and his chickens. Although many may have overlooked the red face-rash that the farmer evidently has, professor Nicolas Kluger of The University of Helsinki | HY-Skin and Allergy Hospital, has not.

“The farmer displays a striking medio‐facial redness located on the nose and the cheeks and that extends to the glabella, under the moustache, and the chin. The rash spares the periorbital area (Fig. 1). To us, the painter has here depicted a facial seborrhoeic dermatitis in his character, possibly associated also with rosacea.”

“We failed to find any previous depiction of seborrhoeic dermatitis in our previous researches or in the medical literature. The redness of the face and nose of the chicken handler here echoes back to the comb and wattles of the roosters. The question whether Ragnar Sandberg painted intentionally a cutaneous facial condition such as seborrhoeic dermatitis remains unanswered.”

See: Seborrhoeic dermatitis in an oil painting at the Gothenburg Museum of Art in the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, Volume 34, Issue 7, Feb. 2020.

Note: Professor Kluger also runs Le Dermato tatoué blog. “Dermatology, Tattoos , Art . . .” (in French)

_{Research research by Martin Gardiner}