dmunger | November 3, 2008Take 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 letters in the movie. Each circle will either contain a Z or a K. Again, ignore the letters appearing outside of the circle. Go ahead, give it a shot.
Just watch the video once! What order did you see the Z and the K in? Let's make this a poll.
What letters did you see? ( surveys)
I don't…
dmunger | October 31, 2008With 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 know something else: Does a person's interest and involvement in the race affect their predictions? Will Obama supporters predict a wider margin of victory for their candidate?
And does being well-informed help? A relatively new phenomenon this year is poll aggregation websites, which collect the…
dmunger | October 30, 2008Carmen 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 strongly-held beliefs. It's such a distasteful feeling that people will often invent convoluted justifications to account for their actions. For example, if a white employer who believes herself not to be a racist decides not to hire an African American job applicant, she might justify her decision by…
dmunger | October 28, 2008Encephalon 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)
dmunger | October 27, 2008When 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, taking the train back home when I was done.
At this point, Greta was extremely pregnant with Nora. She was exhausted at the end of her workday, but Jimmy had usually taken a nap in the car, so he was raring to go. All Greta wanted to do was lie down and take a rest, and fortunately, there was one way…
dmunger | October 24, 2008Aren'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 generation were more likely to have similar names than couples from the current generation.
It seems plausible, but is it really true? We invited readers to give us the names of their own grandparents, as well as their current significant others, and they responded with over 3,000 names. Then we…
dmunger | October 22, 2008Nora 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 desire.
But what happens if a child is particularly successful at expressing her needs using gestures? Does development of spoken language suffer? One approach to this problem is to look language development in cultures that tend to use more gestures. Many studies have confirmed the "stereotype" that…
dmunger | October 21, 2008Yesterday 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.
If you're not familiar with Ariely's work, you should consider reading his book Predictably Irrational, or at the minimum check out his blog, which is full of fascinating research and anecdotes about how we make (un)informed decisions.
At his talk last night, Ariely offered a several fascinating…
dmunger | October 20, 2008You'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 state -- and your gender. We've discussed before how emotion can affect risk-taking: Fearful people, for example, tend to be less willing to take risks, while angry people seem more willing to. But what if the same emotion led to different risk reactions in different people?
It might actually make…
dmunger | October 17, 2008My 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 Bernice.
Is it a coincidence that these happily-married couples each had similar names? Are people more likely to marry others with first names similar to their own? If so, was this phenomenon something that was more common decades ago, or does it still happen today?
We just might be able to find out. In…
dmunger | October 16, 2008Ben 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.
"And I took your arm," Bernice said.
"I was thrilled by that," Ben said.
"And the reason I took your arm is, you seemed nervous. And I wanted to make you more comfortable."
It's a heartwarming story, and I encourage you to listen to the whole thing. Don't worry, we'll wait for you. When you get…
dmunger | October 14, 2008Yesterday 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 counting the number of "upturned arcs" or "downturned arcs." Here's a sample video:
In this video, the "faces" formed by the arcs are smiling, but in the other video they were frowning. Both clips showed the identical number of upturned and downturned arcs -- six. Yet we weren't able to replicate…
dmunger | October 13, 2008Here'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 DOWNTURNED arcs -- just watch the video once!
How many did you see? Record your answer below.
How many downturned arcs did you see (second try) ( polls)
After you've answered the poll, read on for an explanation of what this all means.
Just to make sure your answer isn't spoiled, I'm going to…
dmunger | October 10, 2008Last 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 illusion. Over 1,600 readers took our online survey about the illusion. What's interesting about the illusion is that it's ambiguous -- it can appear to be spinning both clockwise and counter-clockwise. Here's how our readers saw it:
So roughly two-thirds of viewers initially saw it spinning clockwise,…
dmunger | October 9, 2008Take 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 whatever an animator can conceive of.
But the advent of realistic simulations such as this makes it clear that people need to be more aware than ever of the potential for digital fraud. We now have email spam, but in the future we might have similar computerized instant messaging spam, or even video…
dmunger | October 7, 2008When 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 recognizing the faces of friends and family members. We can even recognize people we know well by viewing point-light displays of them walking. But what about strangers? If we see the same person twice, do we remember them correctly? How accurate are we at determining whether a person matches the…
dmunger | October 3, 2008You'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 illusion, and vision scientist Michael Bach (who has a great illusions page) suggested a Casual Fridays study based on the illusion. Some people see it spinning in one direction, some people see it spinning in reverse, and some can see it both ways. Do the people who can see the illusion have…
dmunger | October 2, 2008You'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 street in an unfamiliar city. It's 11:30 p.m., you're alone, and there are no signs of activity other than the occasional passing car. Suddenly you notice a large man emerge from an alleyway ahead of you and stride purposely in your direction. Is he a threat?
In situations such as these, you'd probably…
dmunger | October 1, 2008When 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 of movies that happened to carry an R rating (as he insisted)?
To further complicate matters, there are separate ratings systems for TV, movies, video games, music, and even web sites. With such an array of ratings systems, are parents actually aware of what each rating means?
There's been…
dmunger | September 29, 2008Thomas 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 try to do in an election is to predict the candidate's future behavior. We know what the candidates have done in the past, but how they'll respond in future crises is what will matter most if they are elected.
If a new crisis emerges, will the new president take risks, or play it safe? One test…