Psychology
eanthes | January 12, 2007Piers Steel, a professor at the University of Calgary's school of business, knows why you procrastinate. And he's got the formula to prove it. Steel has just published his mathematical model for procrastination, and it looks a little something like this:
Utility = E x V / Î D
Where utility is the desirability of a task, E is the expectancy someone has of succeeding at it, V is the task's value, Î (the Greek letter gamma) is the task's immediacy, and D is an individual's sensitivity to delay. (The formula does not, alas, seem to account for such factors as the likelihood of being e-mailed a…
omnibrain | January 10, 2007Ahhh modeling... gotta love it - especially when it models something like procrastination - or "Temporal Motivation Theory" as Dr. Piers Steel from the University of Calgary business school calls it.
He find these interesting things in his paper, "The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure." published in Psych Bulletin:
* Most people's New Year's resolutions are doomed to failure
* Most self-help books have it completely wrong when they say perfectionism is at the root of procrastination
(He spent time reading self help…
omnibrain | January 9, 2007
Here are a bunch more - absolutely amazing.
I also ran across this today - here's some more examples of really really cool (and very expensive) furniture.
Ohhh yeah - if you'd like an omnibrain email address (run by gmail) shoot me an email and I'll set you up.
steve -at- omnibrain -dot- org
omnibrain | January 9, 2007We're always happy to link to (good) sites mentioning Omni Brain - but this one is better than usual :) Check out this interesting podcast from the blog Shrink Rap called My Three Shrinks. This
week covers topics like neuroeconomics, fMRI lie detection, and of course omnibrain ;) If you haven't been to Shrink Rap before...
Dinah, ClinkShrink, & Roy introduce Shrink Rap: a blog by psychiatrists for psychiatrists. A place to talk; no one has to listen. All patient vignettes are confabulated; the psychiatrists, however, are mostly real.
clock | January 9, 2007There is a new manuscript online which I will undoubtedly find interesting, I bet, once I find time to read its 52 pages (OK, double-spaced TXT with a long list of references and an Appendix of stats):
The Secret Lives of Liberals and Conservatives: Personality Profiles, Interaction Styles, and the Things They Leave Behind (pdf) by Dana R. Carney, John T. Jost, Samuel D. Gosling, Kate Niederhoffer and Jeff Potter.
ABSTRACT: Seventy-five years of theory and research on personality differences between political liberals and conservatives has produced a long list of dispositions, traits, and…
sb admin | January 8, 2007
Rejection letters always hurt a little, even for Dr. Phil. I'm sure he'll work through it.
Thank you for submitting your application for the director's position at the National Institutes of Health. As the N.I.H. is the principal force guiding America's efforts in medical research, we have strived to consider every candidate's application seriously.
Our first impression was not a good one. You have a loud and exuberant manner that is an oddity in our network of colleagues, and for the duration of the interview process, you were physically sitting on top of Dr. James Watson (a man…
omnibrain | January 8, 2007Check out this new pilot from PBS. You can watch the episode next Wednesday on TV or you can see it right now right here.
If you want this program to continue show your support by watching and sending your love to the website :)
Here is their press release:
22nd Century
"World Wide Mind"
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
8:00 p.m. EST
Ever wonder what the world is going to be like in the future? Will human life spans increase to 250 years or more? Will your personal computer become smarter than you? Will machines shrink so small they can make repairs inside a human cell?
22nd Century is an…
ksharpe | January 8, 2007A Psychology Today article linked from today's edition of Arts & Letters Daily,entitled "The Loopy Logic of Love," discusses the mental tricks that lovers play when evaluating a potential mate.
The article's author, Kaja Perina, writes that men and women in the first flower of a relationship delude themselves in typically gender-specific ways. Men overestimate a woman's degree of interest in them, while women defensively assume that men are just looking for sex (even more than is actually the case, that is).
In the most interesting part of the article, Perina suggests that our society's…
omnibrain | January 8, 2007It seems that the New York Times may have some rampant speculation on their hands as to what parts of the brain make a hero ;)
When Mr. Autrey saw the stranger, Cameron Hollopeter, 20, tumble onto the tracks, his brain reacted just as anyone else's would. His thalamus, which absorbs sensory information, registered the fall, and sent the information to other parts of the brain for processing, said Gregory L. Fricchione, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Mr. Autrey's amygdala, the part of the brain that mediates fear responses, was activated and sent sensory…
omnibrain | January 6, 2007I apologize for the previous post on sleeping positions and personality...that was clearly wrong, since this is obviously the correct way of determining someones personality type.
...you may want to listen to all that sneezing: A body language expert said that a sneeze can offer a revealing look at someone's personality. "Most of us have a sneeze style that we stick with throughout our lives that matches our personality," said Patti A. Wood, a body language expert who created the Achoo IQ Study for Benadryl.
And just like the sleeping positions, there are different types:
be right…
omnibrain | January 6, 2007
Ahh... more silliness from the old blog:
"Scientists believe the position in which a person goes to sleep provides an important clue about the kind of person they are."
I really enjoy the different position names:
The Foetus
Log
The yearner
Soldier
Freefall
Starfish
Farting Buffalo
Ok.. I'm lying about the farting buffalo.
Well I know this whole thing is a little retarded but I think I may be:
The yearner (13%): People who sleep on their side with both arms out in front are said to have an open nature, but can be suspicious, cynical. They are slow to make up…
omnibrain | January 5, 2007This is a pretty darn cool study :)
To investigate, the researchers recruited 28 pooches and their owners. In each experimental session, the dog's owner or another familiar person positioned the dog about a meter away from a computer monitor hidden behind a screen. Then, the researchers played a recording of either the owner or a stranger saying the dog's name five times through speakers in the monitor. Finally, the researchers removed the screen to reveal a still image of either the owner's face or the face of a stranger. Video cameras recorded the dogs' reactions.
When the owner's voice…
omnibrain | January 4, 2007Well there's Ask a ScienceBlogger... I think I want to institute "Help a ScienceBlogger."
Can anyone help me find sources about the development of religious beliefs in children?
omnibrain | December 30, 2006
After a previous post about mind control devices I received an interesting email from Catherine Heywood of the British Mind Control Network. It's a shame that "The British Mind Control Network (BMCN) is an online resource at present but hopes to become so within the next three years"
I'm sure there would be some pretty interesting reading on that site to say the least. Get that website up Catherine!
In any case, it seems that there is some serious mind control going on in Britain and elsewhere ;)
See below the fold for some details - and the document I received.
The British are…
razib | December 24, 2006Below I spoke of historical perspective, while earlier I referred to Christmas as "universal pagan wine poured into a particular Christian chalice." I thought I might elaborate upon this.
First, the cultural and historical origins of Christmas are multi-textured. Though Christians assert "Jesus is the reason for the season," a more precise formulation might be that "Jesus became the reason for the season in the minds of some." This is important. It is not without rationale that Christian groups like the Jehovah Witnesses reject Christmas, it is not a scriptural festival. Its emergence in…
omnibrain | December 22, 2006From the old blog:
I thought I would share an abstract I ran across while paging through some journals that I ordered from the stacks.
Human Ethology: The snack-bar security syndrome
By David P. Barash
From State University College (SUC?!), Oneonta, N.Y.
Psychological Reports, 1972, 31, 577-578.
Summary.-- I studied the behavior of Homo sapiens in an eating-place and found indications of security-seeking behavior, perhaps suggesting an unconscious, species-preserving fear of predators. Solitary individuals showed a significant preference for wall tables over center tables while grouped…
omnibrain | December 18, 2006
-via mindhacks-
This is Temple Grandin, whose Autism helps her understand the cows she's working with. She helps them feel comfortable as they get taken to the slaughter house.
Temple was profiled by Oliver Sacks in An Anthropologist on Mars. I think she might have even made the comment that she feels like an anthropologist on mars which obviously became the title of the book (i could be wrong since its been a while since I've read it). I think she also created an interesting machine that could best be described as a 'hugging' machine.
omnibrain | December 18, 2006
In no particular order...
1) Being a south paw promotes survival from attacks (well at least in crabs). It seems that
The left-handed advantage is realized when snails interact with predators of opposite handedness. Some predatory crabs are "righties" -- and have a specialized tooth on their right claw that acts like a can opener to crack and peel the snail shells. "The 'sinistral advantage,' or advantage to being left-handed, is that it would be like using a can opener backwards for the crab to crack and peel the snail shell,"
Does something like this apply to humans? We're still…
clock | December 17, 2006According to this article (and the podcast of the NPR show linked there), you should like my deep voice. I got it from my Dad. He sang the deepest Bass in many choirs over decades, toured the world and cut records. His voice was absolutely amazing. His best friends' voices (well, those were all the guys from the bass-baritone section of the choir) were also amazing. So, from very early on I was aware of the power of the human voice.
But, I recently realized that my voice appears to be higher-pitched when I speak and sing in English than when I speak or sing in Serbian, probably due to…
omnibrain | December 17, 2006An interesting History channel segment about Aldous Huxley and his mescaline use.
If you haven't read The Doors of Perception - or really most of his other works - you should!