Psychology
razib | September 30, 2006Back in August AlphaPsy had series of posts on 'naturalism' in the context of culture. Check them out! (links below) I strongly believe it is important to discuss human affairs with a multi-disciplinary lens, too often the public discourse is presupposed on naive psychology, while elite models tend to fixate on one dimension (e.g., the 'rational actor,' a pet historical paradigm, etc.).
A Primer on Evolution
A Primer on Cognition
A Primer on Culture
A Primer on Darwinian Psychiatry
A Primer on Religion
A Primer on Coevolutions and Domestications
A Primer on Technology
A Primer on Meta-…
grrlscientist | September 28, 2006Okay, you can stop laughing now, even though I agree with you that the title for this entry is rather amusing. This quiz is made even more hilarious if you knew the reason for my partial hiatus from my blog.
Anyway, feel free to share your results and comments on this quiz below the fold.
You Are 85% Grown Up, 15% Kid
Your emotional maturity is fully developed, and you have an excellent grasp on your emotions.
In fact, you are so emotionally mature - you should consider being a therapist!
How Emotionally Mature Are You?
grrlscientist | September 27, 2006I hate to publish online quizzes on a more or less daily basis for you all, dear readers, instead of writing material with more substance, but right now, this is the best I can do. By posting these quizzes, I am trying to let you know that I have not abandoned you, that even though I am quiet right now, I am here, that your comments mean more to me than you probably know, and I try to respond to your comments in email.
However, that said, I daily debate with myself about whether I should provide more detail to you regarding why I cannot post here at my typically frequent level. There are…
clock | September 17, 2006It's looking good. Certainly much smaller than the roomful of metal we are used to seeing in hospitals.
Do you remember when computers used to fill entire rooms? Now take a look at your cell phone. Now think MRI in 10-20 years...
See what I'm getting at?
I am patiently waiting for the time when MRIs are small and light enough to be mounted on heads of freely behaving animals (in the wild or in captivity), at least large animals like elephants, dolphins, horses, crocs or sharks... Then you use radiotelemetry to get the info loaded on your computer and you observe the brain activity in…
clock | September 14, 2006Nicotine Lessens Symptoms Of Depression In Nonsmokers:
Nicotine may improve the symptoms of depression in people who do not smoke, Duke University Medical Center scientists have discovered.
The finding does not mean that people with depression should smoke or even start using a nicotine patch, the researchers caution. They say that smoking remains the No. 1 preventable cause of death and disability in the United States, and that the addictive hazards of tobacco far outweigh the potential benefits of nicotine in depression.
But the finding suggests that it may be possible to manipulate…
razib | September 11, 2006A few days ago Alex Palazzo posted about Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong. The title is pretty self-explanatory. The author has a Moral Sense Test that you can take. I took it. If you plan on taking the Moral Sense Test, please click now before you read further and get "spoilers."
Back? Below is my summary, you can compare it to yours.
The scenarios you judged in this test pit means against ends, whic is a common philosophical contrast. Each of the characters must choose whether to use bad means to acheive good ends -- for instance, whether to harm a…
clock | September 6, 2006Obligatory Readings of the Day:
Amanda: Disney emerges from the grave, demands right wing propaganda so he can stop spinning
Publius: ABOUT THAT LENIN ANALOGY
David Neiwert: Projecting fascism
Sara Robinson: Tunnels and Bridges: A Short Detour
RobertDFeinmanOvercoming the Authoritarian Personality
Archy: I break with Olbermann
clock | September 4, 2006This article looks into the possible causes of the recent crash in Lexington.
clock | August 28, 2006Where does one start with debunking fallacies in this little article? Oy vey!
Dolphins and whales are dumber than goldfish and don't have the know-how to match a rat, new research from South Africa shows. For years, humans have assumed the large brains of dolphins meant the mammals were highly intelligent.
No, we knew dolphins were smart millenia before we ever looked at their brains. The ancient Chinese knew it. Aristotle knew it. And the idea that brain size has anything to do with intelligence is, like, sooo 19th century.
Paul Manger from Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand,…
clock | August 26, 2006Bumble Bees Can Estimate Time Intervals:
In a finding that broadens our understanding of time perception in the animal kingdom, researchers have discovered that an insect pollinator, the bumble bee, can estimate the duration of time intervals. Although many insects show daily and annual rhythms of behavior, the more sophisticated ability to estimate the duration of shorter time intervals had previously been known only in humans and other vertebrates.
-------------snip------------------
Bees and other insects make a variety of decisions that appear to require the ability to estimate elapsed…
grrlscientist | August 26, 2006This test (below the fold) tells you a little bit about your personality, although I don't think it is very accurate.
You Are 60% Left Brained, 40% Right Brained
The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning.
Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others.
If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic.
Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet.
The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility.
Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way.
If you're right…
clock | August 25, 2006It is great when you write a blog post about somebody, then that somebody shows up in the comments and clarifies his position thus starting an interesting conversation (both in the comments and via e-mail), then you realize that his book-signing tour is bringing that somebody to your town, so you go there and meet that somebody in person and have a great conversation, which inspires you to write yet another blog post - the one under the fold....
It's too late and I am too tired to write a long post on this, but I know I won't have time tomorrow. All dirty, scrungly and unshaven after a day…
clock | August 21, 2006This is not a real review - I never got to writing it - but it is about a book I mention quite often in my blog posts and think is one of the most insightful about the conservative mindset. Written originally on October 21, 2004:
Whenever a big black SUV with a "W" bumper sticker passes me on I-40 going 90mph in the work zone, my first thought is: "What is this guy compensating for?"
While I argued strongly before that Nurturant Parent model is not feminine, and is only seens as such by people adhering to the Strict Father model to begin with, I have always felt that the childrearing process…
clock | August 16, 2006The third part of the series on authoritarian psychology by Sara Robinson is now up on Orcinus. It tackles the strategies for dealing with (and hopefully healing and converting) the victims of authoritarian upbringing who turned out authoritarian themselves. The whole series is a must-read.
neurontic | August 14, 2006Okay, clearly Neurontic does not attract the carb-averse. Spaghetti was pretty high up on everyone's list. Answers ranged from a respectable '6' to a lip-smacking '10.'
I contacted a few of you to get the specs on your dinners and here's what I learned:
Yez, a reader after my own heart, gave the meal a perfect '10' and described it as follows:
I'm in a small family style restaurant in Italy. The pasta is something like linguini, and it is absolutely fresh. There is a really simple sauce that goes perfectly with the pasta, delicious veggies on the side and the heavenly Italian bread.
Jen R.,…
neurontic | August 12, 2006I'd like to replicate an experiment I recently read about in Harvard Psychologist Daniel Gilbert's new book Stumbling On Happiness, a philosophical tract masquerading as a self-help book.
Despite residing in the nose bleed section of the ivory tower, Gilbert is a lucid, common-sense thinker with some truly worthwhile insights regarding the human temperament. We'll delve into some of them at a later date. In the meantime, I wanted to give you a taste of the kind of "AHA" moments the book delivers.
Here's what you have to do:1) Imagine you're going to have a spaghetti dinner tomorrow night. 2…
clock | August 10, 2006This is interesting:
Landscapes And Human Behavior:
On Arizona State University's (ASU) Polytechnic campus, graduate student families in the cluster of six houses abutting lush lawns and ornamental bushes spend time together talking while their kids play outside. Meanwhile, the families in a nearby cluster of six homes barely know each other. But that may be in part because their homes sit on native Sonoran desert, not nearly as conducive to recreation as the lush microclimate researchers created in the first neighborhood. Social scientists and biophysical ecologists are finding that…
clock | August 8, 2006New Depression Findings Could Alter Treatments.
Kids on antidepressants more likely to commit suicide? I have heard about this several times before, but I believe this is a first study directly asking this question:
"The researchers found no link between the antidepressant drugs and suicidal behavior in depressed patients 19 or older. But children and adolescents in the study who were taking antidepressants were about 50 percent more likely than those not on the drugs to try to kill themselves. And they were about 15 times as likely as those not on the medications to complete the act,…
clock | August 7, 2006Sexual Lyrics Prompt Teens to Have Sex:
Teens whose iPods are full of music with raunchy, sexual lyrics start having sex sooner than those who prefer other songs, a study found.
Whether it's hip-hop, rap, pop or rock, much of popular music aimed at teens contains sexual overtones. Its influence on their behavior appears to depend on how the sex is portrayed, researchers found.
The article does point out skepticism by a couple of other researchers, but the title and the lede suggest that they'd prefer the readers to ignore the skepticism.
clock | August 1, 2006It's been a while since I've written anything about one of my pet topics - the way the changes in the society are resulting in the change in attitudes towards sex and gender, and the change in the institution of marriage, and how it all relates to politics of the moment.
I've been playing it pretty carefully since my move here to SEED scienceblogs, not firing away with my biggest artillery yet. I want to get back there again, gradually, so this is going to be just a summary and an opportunity to get you to read some of my older stuff to see where I stand. It is a also a test balloon to see…