In Brief: From Nude Sunbathing to Red Wines

Remote Control Therapy

Good news for the plugged-in: If you're feeling low due to a mistake such as cheating on your partner, zone out to Desperate Housewives. Watching shows with story lines similar to your own guilt-inducing experience can help you cope with your feelings.

Vineyard Haven

If you're looking for a heart-healthy glass of red wine, choose one from Sardinia or southwest France. Levels of artery-strengthening procyanidins are five times higher in bottles from those regions, thanks to traditional production methods. Not surprisingly, locals benefit from greater longevity than their fellow countrymen.

54%

Fifty-four percent of American adults think public lands should be set aside for nude sunbathing.

Eagle-Eyed Eve

Women are less trusting of clients and colleagues at other companies, a study of 400 senior managers shows. Researcher Simon Pervan speculates that higher empathy allows women to recognize when chummy business relationships aren't so honest and reciprocal after all.

Back to Mayberry

People who live in sprawling neighborhoods have more friends and social interactions than city dwellers, economists at UC Irvine found. The ability to pick and choose social interactions rather than be forced into them may be one reason.

Comp Lit for Tykes

Happiness transcends cultural boundaries (everyone wants to be happy, right?) but the full picture is more nuanced. Children are socialized at an early age to value their culture's favored emotions—partly through storybooks, according to three studies in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by Jeanne L. Tsai, a psychologist at Stanford University, and colleagues. When preschool-age children are shown two smiling faces—one with wide-open eyes and a big smile and another with closed eyes and a small smile—European American preschoolers perceive the big smile as happier than Taiwanese Chinese do. And, overall, American storybook characters have wider smiles than their Taiwanese counterparts. Are the books dictating the preferred facial gestures? Tsai's third study demonstrates that viewing storybooks in which characters smile with bigger or smaller grins does change children's ideas of what smiles best display happiness. Whether calm or excited states are more valued, Tsai says, "culture shapes how people want to feel."

Picking Partners

You can learn a lot about a man from the jut of his jaw. Although past research has shown that masculine features (strong brow ridges, wide jaws) attract women, females don't prefer them when choosing a long-term companion, according to a report in Personal Relationships by University of Michigan psychologist Daniel Kruger. In Kruger's series of online studies, 854 male and female students assessed personality and behavioral traits of males based solely on head shots. They attributed poorer parenting skills and aggression to more masculine faces, and linked more feminine faces with better parenting, supportive behavior, and diligence. Men preferred the less masculine-looking guys to accompany their girlfriends on a trip and both males and females preferred men with less masculine features as dating partners
for their daughters. "Facial masculinity is related to testosterone levels," Kruger says, "which have demonstrated connection with rates of infidelity, violence, and divorce."