Category: Psychology


  • Cannot believe I have yet to read NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children! It looks to have all the things I love: scientific studies debunking common assumptions, policy, school programs, etc. At least it is already on the wishlist. Also, I follow NutureShock on Twitter. A list of articles on the topic. The first part on…

  • Self-Reporting

    When I read something like this, I start to question the validity of the method. Psychologist Sam Gosling analyzed the Facebook profiles of 236 college-aged people, who were also asked to fill out personality questionnaires… surveys that were designed to assess not only how study participants viewed themselves in reality, but also what their personalities…

  • Passing the Sniff Test

    I found a discussion over brunch entertaining. Apparently women sniffed teeshirts worn 2 days by males. Women preferred the shirts belonging to genetically dissimilar men. These are the good men because they ensure better MHCs in offspring. Unfortunately, the women on oral contraceptives preferred genetically similar men. Yeah. The latter women would prefer their brother,…

  • The first couple TED videos I watched didn’t impress me. A few weeks later, I saw this post from Sam about the top 10 TED videos. Sam is one of those people who reserves good for the truly special so I made sure to watch them. This video was the first on that list and…

  • In the Q&A, Stuart Brown, co-author of Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, rejects the idea play is a rehersal for adulthood. Stopping an animal from playing doesn’t prevent the animal from being a successful predator. REM sleep provides the rehearsal needed for learning. Play is the next…

  • I was attracted to this video because a while ago I read Daniel’s book: A Whole New Mind. Take the concept that simple, clearly defined jobs will move to overseas. So to succeed in the United States, children need to be learning conceptual skills and become the people inventing the work doled out to overseas workers. Let’s…

  • He’s associated damage to the temporal lobe with psychopathic killers. The epigenetic effects, brain damage, and environments appears to be an MAOA variant on the X chromosome with experiencing violence around 3 years old. Males only get the X from their mother. Men are much more likely. Girls get one X from mother and one from…

  • Smart Boys

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    George and I talked about this some last night. Nature vs Nurture… I tend to think of both as bottlenecks for human development. The debate about which does more to me makes as much sense as debating which is better for a web application: Apache or MySQL? Both are involved and affect the end results.…

  • Typealyzer

    Purely for fun. Typealyzer gives a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator result from analyzing the text in your blog. I find it interesting this blog scored an INTJ and another ISTP. Prior to working in IT, I was always an INFP. Then I started getting INTP and lately INTJ. So the ISTP is a little odd to me. INTJ –…