Office betting pools, baby-faced CEOs and bikinis

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They’ve nothing to do with one another (nothing printable here, anyway) -- except they’ve all been the topics of recent consumer-based research. In this very focused type of analysis, otherwise ordinary reactions are analyzed and the data crunched for future use. Lest you doubt how predictable we are and how easily we can be manipulated, check out these findings in the June issue of the Journal of Consumer Research:

• Baby-faced CEOs of scandal-plagued companies may have an edge in the public perception department. When shown accounts of fake corporate misdeeds, study participants assumed that those executives with large eyes, small noses and small chins to be more honest, say researchers at Hong Kong University and Columbia University. Those executives with more mature faces didn’t have quite the same benefit of the doubt. But this bias held true only for minor crises. When the fake scandal involved competency, that baby-faced image presented more of a problem. Then, maturity had an edge. So Mr. and Ms. Executive Board Member, looking ahead to potential future scandals, you might want to give that some thought. Here’s a ReutersLife take and the actual abstract to the study.

• Office pools aren’t as much fun as you might think. Betting on a game or contest actually makes the proceedings less enjoyable, say researchers at Arizona State University, at least according to studies in which participants were asked to bet on game shows and marble games. Turns out, no one likes to be wrong. And just the fact that participants could be wrong, even if they turned out to be right in the end, was stressful. ‘Anticipated regret’ is the term the researchers use. I know it well. Again, a ReutersLife version and the abstract.

• And, finally, touching bras, looking at photos of beautiful women or watching videos of bikini-clad women can instill a sense of urgency in some men (some straight men to be exact) -- but not necessarily for sex. Researchers in Belgium found that the stimuli made some men focus on the now instead of the future. That’s not to say the response had nothing to do with sex, just that sexual appetites fuel the desire for immediate gratification of some sort, be it for money or candy. Not all men went for the immediate rewards -- just the more impatient ones. Here’s the abstract (you have to buy a subscription to the journal for the whole enchilada).

They study this kind of stuff every month. What a gig.

-- Tami Dennis