Cyber Bullying

BBC article on cyber bullying.

Why I study rape the way I study rape.

My research on sexual assault is on how third-party observers view the rapist, survivor and the situation. Students are more interested -- and understand better -- areas about sexual assault which I don't study: survivor reactions, and pornography and rape. It makes sense for a psychologist to study how women (and men) respond to sexual assault, how they cope and how to speed the coping process; and it also makes sense for a psychologist to study the relationship between pornography and sexual assault. To students, it seems trivial to study how much a person blames a rapist for raping and what factors make people blame a rape survivor more for being raped. None of these things seem useful.

In this article, from Slate, there's an excellent example about why I study rape the way I do. People don't view rape the same way as other crimes (an excellent set of examples is at the end of the first page and beginning of the second). And, as this whole case shows, the way third-party observers view rape can have a great deal of impact on the well-being of people.

Beauty is only pixel deep!

Dove's Self-Esteem Project's Evolution film.

Playboy alters the images of its model so much that they forgot to replace one model's bellybutton! Readers demanded their money back for the issue.

Muslims’ Veils Test Limits of Britain’s Tolerance

New York Times article

Two interesting things. First, it appears that the Britons who are upset about the veil are talking past the Muslim-Britons: the Muslim-Britons see it as a political and free speech issue. Why is it not perceived that way? And (a related) second, I wonder to what degree attitudes against the veil are anti-Muslim attitudes being expressed symbolically?

science quote

"The job of a scientist is to generate wrong ideas as fast as possible."

-- Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel Prize winning physicist

Dinosaurs

Why are dinosaurs so popular (e.g. Jurassic Park)?

Freud would say that it's identification with something that is stronger than ourselves and stronger than the things we fear.


Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
©2007 Universal Press Syndicate Custom comic pages by MYCOMICSPAGE.COM

Knowing what we don't know

The adaptive unconscious has an extremely powerful influence on our behavior. A lot of what we do is not conscious.

An excellent demonstruation is here

Inattentional Blindness

People only perceive what they are looking for and what they think they will see. As a friend of mine is graduate school said, "I'll see it when I believe it."

This video is an excellent example of how well we misperceive.




While the above video was a demonstration, the following video is from an actual experiment which tested the hypothesis of inattentional blindness.

Participants were asked to watch the video and count the number of passes made by the team dressed in white.

Go to this page and watch the video

http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html

After watching it, scroll down

















in this condition (count the passes by the team in white) only 42% of the participants noticed the gorilla.

Here is a link to the article.

And now for something completely different: not closed loop communication

Closed loop communication is when the listener repeats what they hear to allow the speaker to confirm that the listener correctly heard it. Any submarine movie (or episode of Star Trek) provides numerous illustrations.

This video is not an example of closed loop communication.

Brand Building, Social Networking & Cellphones

"The Coca-Cola Company is hoping its new mobile site for social networking,

Sprite Yard, will become the MySpace of the cellphone world. "