Vaguely interesting (Aug 26)

(1)  “The chimpanzees used a combination of partner choice and punishment of competitive individuals to reduce competition. In the end, cooperation won.”

(2)  “False report probability is likely to exceed 50% for the whole literature. In light of our findings the recently reported low replication success in psychology is realistic and worse performance may be expected for cognitive neuroscience.”

(3)  The self-interested roots of nationalist socialism: Turns out that white people who rely on government benefits like the idea of prioritizing government benefits for white people.

(4)  If you ask people raised-religious-but-no-longer-religious why they’re no longer religious, they tell you super-illuminating things like it’s because they no longer believe it, or it’s because they disapprove of organized religion. (Dear Researchers: Humans don’t generally have conscious insight into why they do complicated things. Ask them hard questions about personal motives and you’ll get banal self-presentation.)

(5)  “At the moment, … every state is predicted to vote for the same party as in 2012 except for North Carolina, which flips from red to blue. (Because only two states, North Carolina and Indiana, voted differently in 2008 and 2012, FiveThirtyEight also forecasts a duplication of the 2008 outcome in every state but one.)”