Success and interpersonal touch in a competitive setting

Early observations of interpersonal touch among American adults have revealed rates of touch well below that of many European and Latin American countries. Conclusions drawn from these results, however, mandate caution since touch has been shown to be affected by age, gender, race, and setting. Observation of mens' televised sports has revealed that high rates of touch often follow a successful performance. The present study attempted to quantify touch within a mixed-gender, competitive setting in both black and white subcultures. Interpersonal touch following a success and otherwise occurring was observed among bowlers during league play. Overall rates of touch were much higher than those reported for other public settings. High rates of touch following a success were reported only for blacks. Unlike previous studies females initiated cross-gender touch as often as did males.     

THE METRICS OF STYLE: ADAM SMITH TEACHES EFFICIENT RHETORIC

Does style matter for economic writing? Several stylistic characteristics of ninety-seven AEA presidential addresses, including word length, sentence length and percent of sentences in the passive voice, were computed and used to explain citations to these economists' work. Avoidance of the passive is an old stylistic norm given by Adam Smith. Word length and sentence length serve as modern stylistic norms. Only the percent passive matters to explain citations. Perhaps not coincidentally, while writing clarity in our data set has declined over time when measured by the new norm, it has improved when measured by the old norm.