Saw this post over at Dan Ariely‘s Predictably Irrational blog (a recommend addition to your RSS reader). Dan is a Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University and a visiting Professor at MIT. His book, Predictably Irrational is on my read list at LinkedIn.
Dan used Google in a way most of us (me at least) haven’t thought of yet – researching human behavior. We do use Google to search for stuff, but Dan hasn’t searched for anything. He merely started typing and waited for Google’s predictions – the drop-down list that opens up, suggesting you search queries, based on what other people frequently looked for.
The query Dan started typing was:
“how can I get my boyfriend to” and “how can I get my girlfriend to”. The results are hilarious, but proves what the entire world already knows: men are practical, women are after love… 😉