A Eurotunnel ad gets 7x the amount of attention if it’s placed at the top of a relevant page (in this case an article about the Netherlands). Where you say something is just as important as what you say.
Products of our environment
Our behaviour is shaped by forces outside our control.
It’s rarely thought of as the key to national productivity. But without it, people in hot countries can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk. That’s why there is a strong correlation between GDP and temperature, and why Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, said “the first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked.”
Basketball is definitely not a sport of equal opportunity. Height is so important that if you know an American man taller than 7ft (and aged between 20 and 40), there is a one-in-six chance he will currently be playing in the NBA.
The legal system is just one domain in which looks determine outcome: judges fine unattractive criminals more than attractive ones.
People are 2.5x more likely to switch brands after a major life event e.g. new job, marriage, retirement. (Note, this is based on claimed brand usage).
Want to be a CEO? It helps to be tall. In the U.S, 14.5% of men are 6ft or taller. But among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, that figure rises to 58%.
One of the main determinants of whether people donate to charity is not whether they can afford to but whether they are asked to. The percentage of people being frequently asked to donate plummeted during Covid-19. Sure enough, the percentage who donated fell – and only really recovered at the end of 2023, when charities started asking again.
Clock changes are no laughing matter: leaving Daylight Savings Time in the autumn increases minor road accidents by 13%, when an hour of sunlight is reallocated back to the morning and it’s darker in the evenings.
If you look at an election results map of Germany (in 2025), you can still see the iron curtain that divided communist East Germany from the west. The populist AFD party is dominant in the east, where living standards remain low after decades of communist rule, while it fails to cut through in the more prosperous west.
Every governing party facing election in a developed country lost vote share in 2024, the first time this has ever happened.
In university exams, graders tend to get progressively harsher, which is bad news for surnames later in the alphabet: those starting with U to Z are docked a little more than half a point on a 100-point scale compared with A-to-E surnames. A small difference on one occasion, but over time it can have a big impact.
Want to get into Harvard? Make sure your parents went there. Legacy students have a 33% chance of winning a place vs 6% for the rest. (Alternatively, become an elite athlete and your chance of getting in goes up to 86%).
Want to become an NBA player? It helps if your dad played in the league. And you can massively increase your odds of becoming President by the same token (though beware low sample sizes for that stat).
Aside from China (a country with 1.4 billion people and rising wealth), the countries with the most Olympic medals are all high-income democracies. Why is this? They are good at taking care of their inhabitants. Even in the remotest outposts of Norway, for instance, there’s generally an all-weather sports ground around the corner. Usually the changing rooms are warm, the coaches have diplomas, and kids can train and play at a reasonable price.
What causes riots? A study of unrest in 50 African and Asian cities found that “peak levels of unrest occur in the upper 20s [degrees centigrade]”. In short, heat makes it nicer to be outside at night. It’s not a coincidence that the 2011 London riots started in peak August.