Casinos are often described as deliberately obfuscating time through lack of windows and clocks, and a new study examining the relationship between lack of sleep and bias in decision-making indicates sleepy gamblers are good for the house.

29 participants with a mean age of 22 were asked to perform “economic decision-making tasks” under two sets of circumstances- once at eight in the morning following a night of restful sleep, and again at six, after a night of sleep deprivation. More often than not, participants “tended to make choices that emphasized monetary gain, and were less likely to make choices that reduced loss” if they’d been denied proper sleep.

One of the study’s co-authors commented on the findings:

“Even if someone makes very sound, risky financial decisions after a normal night of sleep, there is no guarantee that this same person will not expose you to untoward risk if sleep deprived,” said co-author Michael Chee, M.D., senior author and professor at the Neurobehavioral Disorders Program at Duke-NUS in Singapore.

The study appeared in the March 8th issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Study indicates sleep deprivation breeds bad financial decisions is a post from: The Inquisitr

Scientists have found that having to pee super-bad actually enhances impulse control and leads to better decision making.

The relationship between bodily desires- to relieve oneself, hunger, or sexual stimulation- and impact on delay of gratification in other areas has been studied before, but Mirjam Tuk, of the University of Twente in the Netherlands was inspired to examine the concept from this angle after a coffee binge at a conference:

In an effort to stay alert, she drank several cups of coffee. By the end of the talk, she says, “All the coffee had reached my bladder. And that raised the question: What happens when people experience higher levels of bladder control?”

Tuk and colleagues created some experiments to test the theory. In one, subjects consumed around five cups of water. After 40 minutes, participants were asked to make eight decisions involving self-control, such as “receiving a small, but immediate, reward and a larger, but delayed, reward.” In one, they were offered a smaller amount of money more quickly, or the option of waiting for a larger sum for a longer period.

The subjects who drank a lot of water and didn’t get to go to the bathroom were better at holding out when it came to gratification. Although the results were a bit surprising contrasted with earlier studies, Tuk posited a theory for the findings:

The results were a little surprising from a theoretical point of view; a lot of research in psychology has supported the concept of “ego depletion” — that having to restrain yourself wears out your brain and makes it harder to exert self-control over something else. But Tuk says this seems to work in a different way, maybe because bladder control is largely an automatic, unconscious process.

Have you noticed an uptick in good decisions when you’re doing the pee-pee dance?

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Decision making skills heightened when you’ve really got to pee is a post from: The Inquisitr

From a Flickr founder, new search engine Hunch is out of private beta today.

So if you’re Binged out, you’ve been Google Squared and got your kosher-search on, you might need a bit of a helping hand with your next search. Hunch promises to help you find what you’re looking for on the web in “ten questions or less.” Huh. But in a searchy world where Google Answers, Wikia Search and MSN QnA have all disappeared from the landscape, will users trust the collective opinion?

Caterina Fake thinks so. Fake co-founded Flickr and had something to do with Yahoo! Answers before moving on to create Hunch. As you use it, Hunch asks a variety of seemingly irrelevant questions about you- are alien abductions real? Who makes the best fries? Do you like bumper cars? Building on your answers, the site compiles a demographic profile to find the best search results when you need them.

Clearly the site needs more input to work as intended. Earlier today, as I answered the random questions (not geared to a specific search) it would indicate that X% of users responded with that answer. But if it was a choice of three answers, my result was always the same as 33% of respondents, with no variance.

So I took the direct approach, selecting a question from the dropdown menu at the upper right hand corner of the page. Typing in “is” lead to a bunch of questions- I chose “is my partner cheating on me?” (Sorry, honey, it’s for work!)

A series of questions followed- does he tell you where he’s going? Do you both say “I love you?” Does he let you in on his schedule? After the promised ten questions, I was awarded with this result:

I don’t think Hunch will replace Google, nor is it looking to. But it might provide a comfy home for the legions of search engine surfers seeking answers to more personal questions like should I marry my boyfriend or is my son gay?

Hunch currently has a user satisfaction rate of 80%, and Fake believes with more users, it can go as high as 90-95%. So, what do you think? Will you be using Hunch?

Revolutionary search engine #2394: Hunch is a post from: The Inquisitr