Those pretentious beer snobs may be right: Ever get told that, to really appreciate a Guinness, you have to travel to Ireland? Four researchers took it upon themselves to travel the globe and find out, collecting "data on the enjoyment of Guinness and related factors." The enjoyment of the stout was tested in 71 pubs spread over 14 countries, and the conclusion is that it really is more enjoyable on its home turf, a finding that "remained statistically significant after adjusting for researcher, pub ambience, Guinness appearance, and the sensory measures mouthfeel, flavor, and aftertaste." However, the researchers admit that their study has some limitations, so they're hoping to expand on it a bit.

The illusion of being Barbie: This paper is actually focused on a rather significant cognitive question: what's the ultimate reference point for our visual system? Is it our body, or do we piece together a reference point from our surroundings? It's the method for getting at the question that's a bit weird: the authors used virtual reality goggles to convince people they are the size of dolls—they literally call one of their setups the Barbie doll experiment. Another setup gave people the sense they were giants, up to 13 feet tall. "Our own body size affects how we perceive the world," the authors conclude.

In today's episode of Somewhat Wild Kingdom: We attach radio collars and spend months tracking the elusive... cat. No, not some endangered apex predator, but the domestic cat, as found in the area near the authors' home turf, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. The authors tracked cats that had owners, but found that their wanderings were more or less random, while feral cats adjusted their behavior to adjust to prey availability and threats from predators.

Don't look at that, you'll go deaf: This is something that's extremely familiar to me: get engrossed enough in a task and, although your hearing is working just fine, you'll not notice anything that's said in your presence. Thankfully, it has now been confirmed that this is a real phenomenon, one that the authors term "inattentional deafness." Given a challenging visual task, about 80 percent of the study's participants completely missed the playing of a tone—when not as distracted, only 20 percent missed the sound. I just object to the term inattentional, which implies a lack of attention. Clearly, this phenomenon involves a great deal of attention; it's just not being paid to the person who's talking to you.

If you're happy and you know it, pretend you're not or the girls will ignore you: With over a thousand people surveyed, the authors conclude that, as their title indicates, "happy guys finish last." An expression of happiness by a male was rated least attractive by those surveyed, while a happy female was the most attractive state for that sex. For females, expressing pride is viewed as unattractive, while when men looked proud, they were rated their most attractive. So, it's complete opposites in these cases. Expressing shame was actually considered generally attractive, and shamed males were especially appealing to female young adults. So, if you're a guy, whatever you do, don't look like you like yourself, or you'll be less likely to enjoy yourself.

Obvious result of the week: female rap stars don't promote their domestic skills: Instead, they focus on their sex appeal. Hard to believe, I'm sure, but we now have an exhaustive survey of... well, only six songs that happened to have videos on YouTube. Some of which were by male artists. But, in any case, "both [male and female artists] use misogynistic language to describe women and juxtapose images of independence with material wealth." Based on YouTube comments, which are nearly uniformly recognized as a place where discourse goes to die, the audience accepts the vision of independence being equal to wealth and fails to "explore the true meaning of independence and relationships."

Listing image by Photo by Scott Thompson