Factoids

HT: The Daily Dish

Clean People Feel Morally Superior

Yuck!  It seems obvious, given our obsession with soap, deodorant, etc.:  We need to be better than you.  There’s a place for clean and orderly.  But if dirty, messy are less judgmental, then I have to say I might prefer the less well-groomed. A WIRED summary of the study is here.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness.  Not really.

And this from Dahlia Lithwick at Slate: 3 Women on the Supreme Court (source here)

Social scientists contend that the difference is more than just cosmetic. They cite a 2006 study by the Wellesley Centers for Women that found three to be the magic number when it came to the impact of having women on corporate boards: After the third woman is seated, boards reach a tipping point at which the group as a whole begins to function differently. According to Sumru Erkut, one of the authors of that study, the small group as a whole becomes more collaborative and more open to different perspectives. In no small part, she writes, that’s because once a critical mass of three women is achieved on a board, it’s more likely that all of the women will be heard. In other words, it’s not that females bring any kind of unitary women’s perspective to the board—there’s precious little evidence that women think fundamentally differently from men about business or law—but that if you seat enough women, the question of whether women deserve the seat finally goes away. And women claim they are finally able to speak openly when they don’t feel their own voice is meant to be the voice of all women.

Three is a magic number.  We knew that.