Category: Psychology


  • Watching The Brain. In talking about Tiger Woods’ putt, they guess that he really has consciously removed all anxiety by entering “The Zone”. (Must be old.) The physical manifestation of this is supposed to be his lack of blinking. Now that Tiger is not doing so well, does this mean he is blinking a lot…

  • IE and IQ

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    A friend posted the Internet Explorer users ‘have below-average IQ’ story on Google+. On the one hand, I love the idea of bashing IE users as incapable computer users who ought to get off the Internet. But then my Psychology background screams at this study as generally worthless. The lack of a statistical analysis ought to…

  • Noticed this one from PurpleCar. (I first noticed it through the TED Facebook page and meant to watch it, but for whatever reason did not bookmark it. So maybe better to say renoticed.) Roy setup cameras in his house to capture everything that happens around his son for the purpose of watching the influence of adults…

  • This mention reminded me of a study where men experienced difficulties remembering the news when the speaker was a beautiful woman. Beautiful women should take up chess. Anna Dreber, Christer Gerdes and Patrik Gransmark wrote a Stockholm University working paper in which they found that male chess players pursue riskier strategies when they’re facing attractive…

  • I found this article in The Economist reporting on a study regarding lies on conference calls interesting. David Larcker and Anastasia Zakolyukina of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business analysed the transcripts of nearly 30,000 conference calls by American chief executives and chief financial officers between 2003 and 2007. They noted each boss’s choice of words,…

  • Last year I posted a TED video by Daniel Pink on the science of motivation. This is the same talk but animated. I’d love to see more of these!

  • On December 18, 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 62/139… which declares April 2 as World Autism Awareness Day (WAAD) in perpetuity. News last month about oxytocin helping autism patients’ socialization was quite intriguing. I hope research continues and helps as many as possible. Something so basic as a naturally produced hormone makes me…

  • While I like video games and found Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter an entertaining ride, I am skeptical when people describe video games in all glowing terms. Like everything, they improve specific skills. Also people are attracted to games in which they have specific skills.…

  • You’ve read my previous posts on Dunbar‘s Number, right? Go on…. I’ll wait. Remember the one on Scoble and Facebook? Good. For a while, I fastidiously ensured my number of friends stayed below 150 because I took the idea of Dunbar’s number as a life strategy. Then I let it slip to 200 which I pared back down…