I am Always Late

Being a little late to a meeting or a date is considered quite possible for ladies. However, there are factors which actually can have effects on women’s mind making them respect and care about men way more. Will a woman be late to date with someone she respects and cares about? Less likely. So, what a man should be in order to have less chances to benefit from women’s punctuality, respect and love? According to the specialists at Columbia University, a man’s being overweight or just 5-feet tall is less important and means less to women than the size of the man’s wallet. Sounds too pragmatic? However, the richer the man the more attractive he is for today’s women, the scientists have found out.

According to the report of the specialists, written by Pierre-Andre Chiappori, the leader of the study, lonely people when looking for a partner, always ready for compromises. A a rule, when choosing a partner for life, two groups of factors are considered both for men and women: those are physical attractiveness and socio-economical attractiveness.  It was quite surprising for the scientists to find out that other factors like interests or sense of humor, have considerably less weight in evaluating a potential partner.

Moreover, the scientists went that far that attempted to create a mathematical formula to express the relation between body mass, body size and financial situation of a potential partner. It tuned out that for women, every 10 per cent of a man’s body mass can be compensated by as much as 2 per cent increase of the man’s annual income. In other words, a 6-foot man with body mass of about 80 kilos and annual income of hundred thousand dollars could have added 9 more kilos  to his body mass and compensate it with just 2 thousand dollars added to his annual income.

For men, along with physical factors of a possible life-partner such factor as the level of education plays a role. Less taller but more educated women still value very high in today’s men eyes. These interesting findings were received after interviewing about 665 modern American couples, with the assistance of the experts by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Pierre-Andre Chiappori says: “Our findings tell us that physical appearance is not such a big deal, and it’s easy to compensate for.” Read more about this interesting research in one of the recent issues of the New York Post.

It’s Friday afternoon and most of those who work in the offices or do any type of similar jobs usually feel great at this time of the day. Why? Because just few hours left till the working day is over, and then two long awaited days of rest come. A completely different picture can be seen on Monday afternoon: usually, everyone is feeling depressed, stressed out or nervous, because working week has just started and more job is coming any moment. This phenomena is something very common in all parts of the world, that is why it sometimes falls within a great interest of psychologists and scientists. There are many studies and researches dedicated to studying people’s mood and its influence on our productivity, psychological condition, stress management skills, etc.

In particular, there are a number of interesting facts which became apparent analyzing what people tweet. Scott Golder and Michael Macy, Cornell sociologists, analyzed about five hundred million tweets posted by about 2.5 million people from 84 countries around the world to find out what global tendencies in people’s mood are. No wonder why such technique was chosen, cos’ we usually tweet about the things that are quite important for us. And it’s very easy to figure out how does a person feel by reading his or her tweets.

To a big surprise, it turned out that most of us wake up every morning in very good mood, no matter how cranky or how stressed out we are in the morning. However, by the lunch time people’s mood starts falling down extremely, reaching its lowest point somewhere late in the afternoon. Then, by the early evening we usually start feeling better, and this interesting tendency is absolutely valid for all people, regardless of their cultural backgrounds or geographical location.  Therefore, people’s good mood peaks in the morning and in the midnight, making such factors as the amount of sleep and the amount of daylight important.

Workings schedules are considered another issue which plays a role in how we feel. For example, the study has shown that the peak of people’s good mood in the weekends is pushed 2 hours back, because we like sleeping more in the weekends. Also, people generally feel a lot happier in the weekends, and this tendency is related exactly to the opportunity to rest on Saturday and Sunday. For example, people who live in the UAE, where a working week starts on Sunday and ends up on Thursday, demonstrated quite low mood Sunday morning, cos’ it’s the fist working day for them. Besides of workings schedules, such factors as health condition, active lifestyle and spending a night in a night-club or with friends also play a role in forming people’s mood. The findings of this interesting survey were recently published in Science magazine (Science 30 September 2011: vol. 333  no. 6051  pp. 1878-1881).

It can be not always true, but the fact is: the most of chronic latecomers, or those who are always late, are actually “owls”, or those who like staying awake till late night and then like sleeping till noon. In contrast to them, the “larks” are those who enjoy waking up early, starting their day early and never be late. At that, “owls” are usually late with starting their daily chores, packing their children to schools and leaving for work. In addition, specialists suppose that people who get up late are also more prone to depression, stresses, being overweight and suffering from anxiety than early risers.

A study by the experts of Roehampton University included studying the habits and questioning 1,068 adults about their lifestyle and feelings, has shown that those who wake up early usually feel more happy and successful in their life. Early risers have much better sleeping and eating habits, and are usually in a better physical shape than those who like waking up later. In the framework of the study, the group of “early risers” was defined as people who usually wake up at around 7 a.m., and the late risers were defined as those people who usually wake up at around 9 a.m.

“There are morning people and evening people, and morning people tend to be healthier and happier as well as having lower body mass indices,” Dr. Joerg Huber, one of the study leaders, says. “Maybe morning types are just better suited to this industrial world we are in than late risers.” The scientist underlines that there are certain benefits of being a late riser as well: for example, in those professions which require working in late hours. However, early risers are usually more fit, more punctual, more responsible and do better in their life.

Recently, the findings of two more interesting studies were published. According to a group of psychologists from California University, those of us who are workaholics have higher life expectancy and have a better sex life. The scientists suggest that those who get used to working hard are more resistive to stresses and problems at work, they are more attentive and focused on other people’s needs and feelings. The findings of the other study say that those who like watching TV till late night tend to skip breakfast and are more prone to having extra weight. This can be explained by snaking more while watching TV, resulting in being less hungry in the morning.