dmunger

User Image
Dave Munger

Posts by this author

November 17, 2008
I've set up accounts on FriendFeed and Twitter with the username davemunger. I'm going to give these sites a try for the next week or so. Unlike with Facebook where we've got a profile but haven't really done much, I'd actually like to actively participate in these networks. I'd appreciate any tips…
November 17, 2008
One of things I was taught over and over again when I was in education school was the importance of getting parents involved in kids' learning. If you get the parents on your side, my professors insisted, then you're going to be much more able to get through to the students. I didn't last long…
November 14, 2008
This morning I was having a conversation with Nora about her AP European history class, and it got me thinking about my own experience taking the same class about 25 years ago (yes, kids, they did have AP classes back then). Mainly it reminded me that I can't remember much at all about the class. I…
November 14, 2008
Greta and I will be participating in a panel on blogging tomorrow in Charlotte, NC. If you're in town, you might want to stop by. More information here.
November 13, 2008
Remember this video? A few weeks ago we used it to demonstrate that facial expressions can disrupt the perceptual system in fundamental ways. Actually, because we could only show a few short clips, we weren't able to duplicate the research results found by John Eastwood, Daniel Smilek, and Philip…
November 12, 2008
When Jim and Nora were toddlers, they were huge fans of everything Disney. Here they're wearing their Disney pajamas as they play next to their Seven Dwarves figurines, underneath their TV, which was frequently used to watch Disney videos. We even took them to Disney World, where they had an…
November 11, 2008
Philosophers have wondered for centuries whether someone who was blind from birth would "see" the world in the same way as people with normal vision. After all, there's much more to perceiving the world than properly functioning eyes. Think of it: otherwise all you'd need to do is strap a camcorder…
November 10, 2008
Today I'm visiting Shireen Campbell's class at Davidson College to talk about Cognitive Daily and other writing projects. This post collects the links I'll be using for class. If you're not in the class they might not be relevant to you, but they include some of our most popular posts, so maybe you…
November 7, 2008
Last week we asked our readers to predict the result of the election. How did they do? Out of the 474 people who guessed the results of this year's presidential election, only six got the electoral vote right - 365 votes for Obama (assuming Missouri goes for McCain and Omaha goes for Obama). None…
November 5, 2008
I play soccer every week with an ever-changing group of people. We're all busy, and people get injured or lose interest, so every week the crowd is slightly different; it often feels like we need to re-acquaint ourselves before every game. The easiest way to do this is during warm-ups when small…
November 3, 2008
Take a look at this quick movie. You'll be shown a "ready" screen, followed by a quick flash of eight letters arranged in a circle. Your job is to spot either a "Z" or a "K" in that circle of letters, while ignoring other letters appearing outside of the circle. You'll see two different circles of…
October 31, 2008
With the U.S. presidential election just a few days away, many of us are in a frenzy to get information about the polls and who might be the winner. And everyone has an opinion about who'll win. Today, you can test yourself against other CogDaily readers and see who's the best. But we also want to…
October 30, 2008
Carmen Miranda is probably best-known today as the former spokesperson for Chiquita bananas, but she was equally famous -- and outrageous -- as an actress, singer, and dancer in the 1940s and 1950s. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when people's actions contradict…
October 28, 2008
Encephalon is up at Mind Hacks! Go check it out! Greta and I are off to vote today, so you'll have to get your psychology fix over there. Oh, and out of curiousity: Have you voted yet? ( surveys)
October 27, 2008
When Jimmy was around 18 months old, Greta and I were both in graduate school. I attended classes at night and Greta taught and worked in the lab during the day. In the late afternoon I'd drive into the city with Jimmy in the car seat, and we'd swap -- she'd drive back home and I'd go to class,…
October 24, 2008
Aren't grandparents adorable? They're sweet and kind, they've been married for decades, and they've got wonderful archaic 1920s names like Edward and Edwina. Last week, based on the anecdotal evidence of my own grandparents and a couple from an NPR report, we speculated that couples from that older…
October 22, 2008
Nora was an excellent talker, starting at a very young age, but that didn't mean that she couldn't express herself in other ways. Here, for example, she points to a the item she wants. It's entirely possible that she didn't yet know the word "stick," but she was still quite able to express her…
October 21, 2008
Yesterday Dan Ariely came to Davidson to give a few lectures and meet with faculty in the Economics, Philosophy, and Psychology departments. Greta attended two of the lectures and had dinner with him (along with the rest of the Davidson Psychology faculty). I went to his public lecture last night.…
October 20, 2008
You're given $15. Which of these bets would you gamble your $15 on? An 80 percent chance of winning $18.75 A 40 percent chance of winning $37.50 A 20 percent chance of winning $75 A 5 percent chance of $300 Or would you just keep the original $15? The answer, it turns out, depends on your emotional…
October 17, 2008
My grandfather's name was Vern, and he married a woman named Verna. They were together for more than 30 years until she died. Then he married Elvira. That's them (and great-granddaughter Nora) off to the right. They were together another 20 years. Yesterday we profiled a couple named Ben and…
October 16, 2008
Ben and Bernice Finn have been married for 60 years. And they still remember their first date. "I was very nervous," Ben said. "She was so pretty." "I remember that day very well," Bernice said. "And no, you weren't pretty." But when the couples all went out that night, there was a chill in the air…
October 14, 2008
Yesterday we tried to replicate the effect that John Eastwood, Daniel Smilek, and Philip Merikle observed -- that negative facial expressions distract us from even the simplest tasks more than positive facial expressions. Hundreds of our readers watched one of two videos and were charged with…
October 13, 2008
Here's a really interesting experiment that we may be able to replicate online. Take a look at this very short video. You'll be shown a set of 12 arcs. Some of the arcs will be upturned and some of them will be turned downward, as in the example below. You'll have about 2.5 seconds to count the…
October 10, 2008
Last week we asked our readers about an illusion (created by Nobuyuki Kayahara) that's been circulated very widely recently: While the illusion can't actually determine whether you're "right-brained" or "left-brained," we were curious about what actually affects people's perception of the…
October 9, 2008
Take a look at this video: You may have seen it before -- it's the work of a CGI animation studio that takes the motions of human actors and turns them into animated models, giving them the ability to put incredibly realistic figures in impossible situations, like on Mars, or swimming in lava, or…
October 7, 2008
When Sarah Palin was introduced to the country, most Americans had never heard of her -- but many people noticed that she looked very similar to the then-more-famous actor Tina Fey. Can you tell which is which? Let's make this a poll: Which one is Sarah Palin? ( polls) We're amazingly good at…
October 3, 2008
You've probably seen the "spinning woman" illusion as it circulated around the internet, complete with bogus claims that it can somehow be used to determine whether you're "right-brained" or "left-brained" (themselves concepts of amorphous meaning and validity). But nonetheless it's an interesting…
October 2, 2008
You're at a bar, club, or church social and you've just met an absolutely stunning member of the opposite sex. You're single and available, and you detect no signs of romantic commitment in your new conversation-partner. Could he/she be interested in you too? Or you're walking down a poorly-lit…
October 1, 2008
When Jim was 12 or 13, he seemed to want to watch almost every R-rated movie that came out. PG-13 movies were okay, and PG and G-rated movies were beneath his dignity. Was he simply interested in these movies because they were forbidden (as we contended), or was he somehow more drawn to the content…
September 29, 2008
Thomas Levenson has written an interesting post about John McCain and his fascination with high-stakes gambling. While it's clear that his gambling habit isn't going to put McCain in any serious financial danger, it does raise questions about his personality. One of the most difficult things voters…