These were all in my feed reader this morning from the same site, Barking Up the Wrong Tree. I don’t like his habit of posting large chunks of what he links, but the finding-ability is amazing.

• Smaller units…reduce the rate of consumption of that resource – or, take smaller portions of food and keep smaller bills in your wallet. The increased time for decision-making affects the final result.
• Coitus Interruptus is the Bestest? – “Six studies demonstrate that interrupting a consumption experience can make pleasant experiences more enjoyable and unpleasant experiences more irritating, even though consumers avoid breaks in pleasant experiences and choose breaks in unpleasant experiences. Across a variety of hedonic experiences (e.g., listening to noises or songs, sitting in a massage chair), the authors observe that breaks disrupt hedonic adaptation and, as a result, intensify the subsequent experience.”
• Positive illusions about your partner’s attractiveness correlate with relationship quality – I call partial bs on this one, as I don’t know whether they corrected for the initial phase of the relationship which only appears to be awesome because it is shiny and new.¹
• Nostalgia has positive effects on making individuals feel less lonely – In my day we didn’t need all these scientific studies to whassat?

All this leads to the conclusion that our consciousness is an illusion and most of the time we aren’t even in control of it! Or that science can prove anything given enough resources and a small enough sample set.

¹ It may actually be the best thing ever but neither party is acting with complete knowledge or honesty.