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Did you know that fruit and vegetables have personalities? According to research carried out by Robert Sommer at the University of California, Davis, in 1988, lemons are seen as dislikable, onions are stupid, and mushrooms are social climbers.

Sommer is not alone in his fascination with the stranger corners of the human mind. Each generation, a handful of psychologists have explored where their mainstream colleagues fear to tread. One team investigated whether local suicide rates are related to the amount of country music played on radio. Another made a beauty map of the UK by noting the number of good-looking people walking city streets (London was rated the best, Aberdeen the worst, since you ask).

I have called this discipline “quirkology” – the use of scientific methods to study quirky human behaviour, or quirky methods to probe weightier topics. Having conducted quirkological research for more than 15 years, on subjects such as luck, jokes and dating, I wish to pay homage to the small band of dedicated academics who have kept the quirky flag flying. Here are my eight favourite studies made in the pursuit of peculiar knowledge.

Hell hath no fury like…

John Trinkaus of the Zicklin School of Business in the City University of New York studies ordinary people going about their everyday lives – a rich seam for quirkological research, as you might imagine. One of his specialities is the study of minor acts of dishonesty and antisocial behaviour. In his 25 years of research, one demographical group has come to …