dmunger

Five years ago today, we made the first post that would eventually make its way onto a blog called Cognitive Daily. We thought we were keeping notes for a book, but in reality we were helping build a network that represented a new way of sharing psychology with the world. Cognitive Daily wasn't the…

Take a listen to this brief audio clip of "Unforgettable." Aside from the fact that it's a computer-generated MIDI performance, do you hear anything unusual? If you're a non-musician like me, you might not have noticed anything. It sounds basically like the familiar song, even though the…

We've discussed synesthesia many times before on Cognitive Daily -- it's the seemingly bizarre phenomenon when one stimulus (e.g. a sight or a sound) is experienced in multiple modalities (e.g. taste, vision, or colors). For example, a person might experience a particular smell whenever a given…

Today I had to put off my normal morning run in order to make time to be interviewed on a radio show at 7:30 a.m. As I waited on hold for the interview to start, I could hear the hosts joking back-and-forth about what the "latest TV controversy" is. "Is it the Jay Leno / Conan O'Brien news on NBC…

It's football season in America: The NFL playoffs are about to start, and tonight, the elected / computer-ranked top college team will be determined. What better time than now to think about ... baseball! Baseball players, unlike most football players, must solve one of the most complicated…

Here's this week's list of notable posts from Psychology and Neuroscience at ResearchBlogging.org. Is autism really surging? Michelle Dawson wonders whether the recent rise in autism rates can be traced to methodological differences in studies tracking autism rates. We know many men are attracted…

The TV show Lie To Me focuses on the exploits of an expert in lie-detection as he solves perplexing crimes in his high-tech Washington laboratory. It's actually fun to watch, especially since it appears to make some effort to get the science right (a real-life expert on lie-detection, Paul Ekman,…

[Originally published in November 2007] Both Greta and I are big wine fans. Despite Jonah's recent extremely popular post, I, at least, believe that I can tell the difference between good and bad wines. I'm still convinced that a good wine is more than just an attractive label (though I'm a sucker…

Television can have a huge influence on our lives. But the most important influences may be the ones we don't even notice. I discuss several fascinating studies about television in my latest column on Seedmagazine.com. Here's a snippet: Travis Saunders, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa who…

[Originally published in January, 2006] Clicking on the image below will take you to a short Quicktime movie. Make sure you have your sound turned up, because I've recorded a few sentences that play along with the movie. Your job is to determine, as quickly as possible, if each sentence is…

Suppose your organization is interviewing candidates for an important job. Would it be better for one trusted person to have an extended interview with them, or for several people to talk to them for less time? How many people would you need to conduct the interviews? Would three be enough? Would…

My column on Seedmagazine.com today explores citizen science: serious, peer-reviewed research that relies on the contributions of ordinary individuals. While the projects range from cosmology to zoology, there are plenty of psychology projects too: Project Implicit is an ongoing series of…

For last week's Casual Fridays study we asked respondents to answer James Lipton's famous ten questions from Inside the Actor's Studio. In case you've never seen the show, here are the questions: What is your favorite word? What is your least favorite word? What turns you on? What turns you off?…

I attended an unusual middle school. It was designed on an "open concept," with the idea that there should be no walls between classrooms. Social pressure would keep the noise levels down, because if kids got too loud, then their peers in other classes would encourage them to hush up. This actually…

Nalini Ambady has become famous for her research on "thin slicing," the idea that ordinary people can make accurate judgments about others amazingly quickly. We've discussed work from her lab showing that people can accurately predict teaching ability by watching just six seconds of video of a…

At the end of every episode of Inside the Actor's Studio, interviewer James Lipton asks his celebrity guests the exact same 10 questions, most notably, "What's your favorite curse word?" But why should celebrities have all the fun? We thought it would be neat to ask the same set of questions to our…

In case you missed them, here are my picks of psychology/neuroscience posts from ResearchBlogging.org from the past two weeks: The fatter we get, the less we seem to notice. Peter Janiszewski examines changing perceptions of what it means to be "overweight." Barn owls use feathers to find sounds.…

If you're a regular reader of Cognitive Daily, you're relatively accustomed to seeing surprising things. Indeed, it's gotten to the point where you might even expect it. You've seen optical illusions and videos that baffle the imagination. Yet most participants in psychology research studies aren't…

In celebration of Thanksgiving in the U.S., I'm reposting this piece, originally posted in April, 2008. How often do you take time to reflect on the things you're grateful for? Once a month? Once a week, at church, perhaps? Maybe you say "grace" at mealtime every day. But even prayers that do…

Recently a woman had her sick leave benefits based on a diagnosis of clinical depression terminated because of a few pictures she posted on her Facebook page showing her smiling at a birthday party and enjoying a trip to the beach. Was this a fair assessment of her medical condition? Probably not--…

We received an astonishing number of responses to last week's Casual Fridays study, which claimed to be able to identify what makes a good writer in just a few minutes. Of course, I wasn't actually very confident that a brief survey could actually identify the factors that make a good writer. But I…

How does our visual system decide if something is a face? Some automated face-detecting software uses color as one cue that something is a face. For example Apple's iPhoto has no trouble determining that there are two faces in this color picture: That's Nora in the back, and her cousin Ginger in…

Who's more "sociable," men or women? Common sense says it's women, right? And many research studies back this impression up: Women are more interpersonal, more connected, more interdependent than men. Women are more likely to share intimate information with each other than men. But is that really…

Some people just seem to be natural writers -- they can write perfect, elegant sentences with a minimum of effort. Some popular fiction novelists crank out 6 or more novels per year. Some bloggers write 10 or more posts per day. Others labor over every word, or simply choose careers that don't…

When we were getting ready to have our first child, I decided that I would quit my job, work out of home as a freelancer, and take care of our baby while Greta finished graduate school. That worked well for about two years, but by the time Nora was born, we decided to hire a part-time nanny so I…

This week on SEED, I'm writing about Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), a promising new way to treat clinical depression. Here's a snippet: In DBS therapy, one or more electrodes the size of a spaghetti strand are precisely positioned in the patient's brain, then connected by wire around the skull and…

Take a look at this video from last night's episode of Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show." If you'd like, you can skip past all the political snark to the 4:47 mark to watch Jon bring cognitive psychology into prime time (or at least latenight cable)! That's right; you saw it: Jon Stewart mentioned…

Greta and I did our undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago, or as a commonly-sold T-shirt on campus put it, "where fun goes to die." To say that Chicago didn't emphasize academics over a social life is to deny that people literally lived in the library (a full-scale campsite was found…

My SEED column this week focuses on artificial sweeteners. Can switching to artificial sweeteners help solve the obesity problem in the U.S.? Here's a snippet: Saunders says an August report from the American Heart Association (AHA) made it quite clear that excessive sugar consumption is dangerous…

One of my favorite cartoons as a child was "Speed Racer." It featured an all-American boy (first name, "Speed," last name, "Racer") engaging in that most American of pastimes: driving fast cars. Except that "Speed Racer" wasn't really American; it was made in Japan, and the original Japanese voices…