Whether you're buying a house, a car or second-hand furniture, it's likely you will need to negotiate the price, so being able to negotiate effectively could save you significant cash.

Professor Lionel Page from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) said opening offers in real-world negotiations are sometimes intended to signal the "toughness" of the buyer - but whether this strategy actually works was not known. "This experiment allowed us to study whether and how the level of the opening offer influences the beliefs of buyers and sellers, their actions and the final bargaining outcome," said Professor Page.

The researchers conducted the experiment using a bargaining game. They found that the success or failure of a negotiation depended not only on the final offer on the table but also on the emerging dynamics of the bargaining process. "The intermediary offers made during a negotiation can be interpreted as suggesting either kind and compromising intentions, or unkind and uncompromising ones," said Professor Page. "And the perception of these intentions can, in turn, influence the final outcome. Low offers are perceived as disrespectful, so sellers react negatively and can be spiteful (恼 人) in their counter-offers (还价)," he said. This means it is not the best strategy to always be as tough as possible in a negotiation.

Previously there have been two conflicting views on first offers in negotiations, said Professor Page. One view is that a low opening offer works as an "anchor" that moves the final offer in the direction of the first offer. The second is that a more reasonable initial offer achieves a better outcome because it doesn't sour the atmosphere and endanger the agreement. Professor Page said their study showed support for both these ideas.

Collecting must be one of the most varied of human activities, and it’s one that many of us psychologists (心理学家) find fascinating.Collecting hundreds or even thousands of postcards, chocolate wrappers or whatever, takes time, energy and money that could surely be put to much more productive use. And yet there are millions of collectors around the world. Why do they do it?

There are the people who collect because they want to make money. They’ll look for, say, antiques that they can buy cheaply and expect to be able to sell at a profit.

【小题1】 Buying cheap and selling dear can give the collector a sense of victory. And as selling online is so easy, more and more people are joining in.

Many collectors collect to develop their social life. 【小题2】 This is a variant on joining a bridge club or a gym, and similarly brings them into contact with like-minded people.

Some may spend their whole lives in a hunt for this. 【小题3】 There is a danger, though, that if the individual is ever lucky enough to find what they’re looking for, rather than celebrating their success, they may feel empty, now that the goal that drove them on has gone.

【小题4】 Stamp collecting, for example, opens a window to other countries, and to the plants, animals, or famous people shown on their stamps. Similarly, many collectors collect fossils, animals and plants from around the globe, and their collections provided a vast amount of information about the natural world. 【小题5】

If you think that running marathons will help you live a long and healthy life, new research may come as a shock. According to a recent scientific study, people who do a very strenuous workout are as likely to die as people who do no exercise at all.

Scientists in Denmark have been studying over 1,000 joggers and non-joggers for 12 years. The death rates from the sample group indicate that people who jog at a proper pace two or three times a week for less than two and a half hours in total are least likely to die. The best speed to jog at was found to be about 5 miles per hour. The research suggests that people who jog more than three times a week or at higher speeds of over 7mph die at the same rate as non-joggers. The scientists think that this is because strenuous exercise causes structural changes to the heart and arteries (动脉). Over time, this can cause serious effects.

Peter Schnohr, a researcher in Copenhagen, said, “If your goal is to decrease risk of death and improve life expectancy (寿命), jogging a few times a week at a proper pace is a good strategy. Anything more is not just unnecessary, and it may be harmful.”

The implications (暗示) of this are that moderate forms of exercise such as taichi, yoga and walking may be better for us than “iron man events, triathlons and long-distance running and cycling. According to Jacob Louis Marott, another researcher involved in the study, “You don't actually have to do that much to have a good impact on your health. And perhaps you shouldn’t actually do too much”.