harper’s FINDINGS INDEX

Makeup makes men more attractive, and Machiavellians have more unprotected sex. A low-ranking male Sapajus libidinosus named Fu was observed masturbating to the sight of other monkeys mating. Straight men become increasingly aroused as women’s low-back curvature approaches the hypothesized optimum of 45.5 degrees. Persistent genital arousal without corresponding psychological arousal appears to be linked to eating disorders. Swear words, across languages, are low in approximant sounds; positive words evolve more slowly than negative ones. People tend to describe their past immoral actions in concrete, mechanistic terms. Nazi propaganda shifted, with the onset of the Holocaust, away from moral disengagement concerning Jews and toward their agency. Countries with weak governance and strong conformism are more prone to belief in witchcraft, but such beliefs cannot be predicted by exposure to past misfortunes. Morning people tend to be conservative, especially in Switzerland, morning people in Russia tend to be progressive.

9

Wild gloomy octopuses who propel debris at one another do so more forcefully when they have turned themselves dark. Middleaged African-American couples in rural Georgia who perceive gratitude in their relationships report lower levels of ineffective arguing and financial stress, and financial stress during pregnancy leads to increased cellular aging in white but not black American children. The global collapse in human sperm counts and sperm concentration has accelerated in recent years, and the lifespans of lab-raised honeybees have dropped by half since the Seventies. Britons who prepay their energy bills consume less fruit and vegetables, underscoring the “heat or eat” dilemma. When preparing frozen stuffed chicken products, poor Americans are more likely than rich ones to use a microwave. Irritable bowel syndrome may arise in those whose bodies cannot deal with gravity. The earliest known sentence-length Canaanite inscription, discovered on an ivory comb containing louse remains, was a prayer for relief from beard lice.

9

Young Mars was covered by an ocean a thousand feet deep; Earth may be experiencing a seventh, not a sixth, mass extinction; and rising seas are expected to rapidly erode rocky coastlines in Devon and Yorkshire. The twenty-five-minute annual discrepancy between Earth’s axial tilt and orbital distance results in a 22,000-year cycle that affects the Pacific cold tongue. A Gobichettipalayam man seeking to rid himself of snake dreams presented to a priest, who advised him to flick his tongue at a Russell’s viper, who then bit the man on the tongue, whereupon the man presented to doctors. Russell Crowe stumbled shoeless upon a poisonous bandy-bandy snake, and Chicago’s goose harassment policy is not working. Dutch wolves were to be shot with paintballs to make them afraid of humans again. Veterinarians reported that localized intercostal blocks had proved superior to fentanyl infusion in the laparoscopic oophorectomies of twenty bitches, researchers were testing a fentanyl vaccine, and ketamine fails to mimic psychosis in some mice. Juvenile marmosets are resilient against social isolation if they are given ayahuasca before their families are taken away. n

% of U.S. teens who have advocated for political issues on social media in the past year: 10 Who have used a hashtag related to a political or social issue: 7

% of Americans who believe that political demonstration is “very important”: 13

Percentage by which independents are less likely than other voters to know their representatives’ party affiliation: 24

To know which party controls Congress: 20

Percentage of eligible Americans who vote: 63 Of Hungarians: 71 Of Uruguayans: 95

% by which fewer people watched the midterm election results on TV last year than in 2018: 30

Percentage by which threats against members of Congress increased between 2017 and 2021: 144

Percentage of Americans who say political advertisements have “a great deal” of influence on how they vote: 8

Average number of words a man says on cable news before he is interrupted: 81 Of words a woman says: 73

Portion of Americans who believe the media prioritizes profits over the public interest: 3/4 Who say they would be willing to pay for their news: 1/5

Chances that a U.S. graduate with a journalism degree regrets this choice of major: 9 in 10

Percentage by which Republicans are more likely to feel unfavorably toward the media than the tobacco industry: 20

Percentage by which women are more likely than men to rely on TikTok as a news source: 59

By which men are more likely than women to rely on Reddit as a news source: 231

Portion of Americans who watch shows or movies with subtitles on “most of the time”: 1/2 Of Gen Z-ers who do: 7/10

Percentage by which young adults are more likely to smoke cigarettes than adults aged 65 or older: 50

By which young adults are more likely to smoke only marijuana than to smoke cigarettes: 270

Number of hours per week the average American spent with friends in 2021: 3

Percentage by which this number has decreased since 2013: 58

% change in the past decade in the amount of time the average American spends alone: +23

Percentage of U.S. households that had a single occupant in 1960: 13

In 2022: 29

% increase since 2000 in the number of Americans aged 50 or older who live alone: 66

Percentage of those Americans who are female: 60

% by which black Americans aged 65 or older are more likely than white ones to live alone: 12

Median net wealth of U.S. homeowners aged 65 and older: $343,100

Of U.S. renters aged 65 and older: $5,800

Factor by which married couples aged 25 to 34 have a greater median net worth than their single peers: 9

Portion of divorced U.S. full-time workers who say that ending their marriage improved their job performance: 2/5

% increase since 2019 in the number of U.S. daters looking for a partner who wants to marry: 28

% of U.S. daters who say they fell in love with someone they weren’t initially attracted to: 49

Who say they are willing to date long-distance: 53

Median age to which Americans expect to live: 82

Number of years by which this exceeds the CDC’s estimate: 6

SOURCES: 1–3 Pew Research Center (Washington); 4,5 Brian Schaffner, Tufts University (Medford, Mass.);6–8 Pew Research Center; 9 Nielsen (NYC); 10 United States Capitol Police; 11 YouGov (NYC); 12,13 Ashique KhudaBukhsh, Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, N.Y.); 14,15 Gallup (Washington); 16 ZipRecruiter (Santa Monica, Calif.); 17 YouGov; 18,19 Pew Research Center; 20,21 Preply (Barcelona, Spain); 22,23 Gallup; 24–26 Bryce Ward (Missoula, Mont.); 27,28

United States Census Bureau (Suitland, Md.); 29–31 The New York Times; 32,33 Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies (Cambridge, Mass.); 34 Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; 35 Connie Wanberg, University of Minnesota (Minneapolis); 36–38 Kinsey Institute, Indiana University (Bloomington); 39,40 YouGov.