May 31, 2007
Category: Social Cognition
The belief that creativity and political conservatism are negatively correlated is widespread not only among the general public (except, maybe, among some conservatives), but among researchers in a variety of fields. And there are some indirect empirical justifications for this...
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Posted by Chris at 9:12 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 28, 2007
Category: Miscellaneous
Originally posted on the old blog on Memorial Day 2005. On Memorial Day, I'm always reminded of the poems of war because, perhaps more than any other form of literature, they paint of it a picture that is more real...
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Posted by Chris at 11:28 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cognitive Psychology
A little over a year ago, I wrote a post describing some research showing that there are cognitive barriers to understanding evolution. There I listed three specific factors: Intuitive theism, in which our intuitions lead us to make design inferences...
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Posted by Chris at 9:30 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Blogs and Blogging
I haven't really updated the blogroll much since, well, I first created it. So if you've got a blog that fits into one of the categories over there on the left, including "seriously good but I don't know what to...
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Posted by Chris at 2:12 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 26, 2007
Category: Miscellaneous
Last night, I took my son to his favorite diner to celebrate the end of 3rd grade. Just before our dinner arrived, a song came on the radio and he stopped talking, listened for a second, and said, "Hey, it's...
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Posted by Chris at 8:57 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 20, 2007
Category: Visual Illusions
Everybody's seen Kanizsa's triangle: It's a simple illusory figure illusion, first reported by Kanizsa(1). The illusion is likely caused by the processes that the visual system uses to separate figures from their ground(2), but to date there doesn't appear to...
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Posted by Chris at 1:44 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 17, 2007
Category: Cognitive Psychology
Some of you who are interested in the history of psychology or philosophy of mind might find this paper interesting: Gentner, D., & Grudin, J. (1985). The evolution of mental metaphors in psychology: A 90-year retrospective. American Psychologist, 40(2), 181-192....
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Posted by Chris at 9:05 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 15, 2007
Category: Visual Illusions
In honor of the announcement of the Best Visual Illusion of the Year (via Steve), I thought I'd revive the old cool visual illusion series. I may post about this year's winner, the leaning tower illusion, in the future, but...
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Posted by Chris at 4:13 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 14, 2007
Category: Philosophy
The second Online Philosophy Conference has begun, and the first week's presentations are up. If you didn't participate in last year's OPC, here's how it works: a presentation and one or two responses are posted for you to read, and...
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Posted by Chris at 4:05 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 11, 2007
Category: Cognitive Psychology
File this one in the annals of "huh?" There's been a lot of research over the last decade or so on what only be described as the bizarre implicit priming of social concepts. In a typical experiment, participants are given...
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Posted by Chris at 10:12 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks