social
dmunger | December 16, 2005We've written before about how stereotypes can impair performance on math tests: for example, when women are told they are taking a math test for a study about gender differences in math ability, they perform more poorly than men. However, if they are first taught about how stereotypes can impair performance, their scores rise to equality with men.
But what about the other side of the stereotype spectrum? When people are expected to perform better due to a stereotype, how do those expectations affect performance? One possible answer is that they will perform even better. Another possibility…
dmunger | December 6, 2005Take a look at these graphs:
Most bloggers and web designers will find this sort of chart familiar—it's a record of Cognitive Daily's visitor statistics for the month of November. The first graph records the amount of traffic we received each day. Notice that the pink bars are shorter—these correspond to the weekends. You might think that weekend traffic is lower just because we don't post new articles on weekends. But we didn't post an article at all on November 14, a Monday, yet still saw an increase in traffic compared to the day before. The second graph charts a number of indicators of…
dmunger | December 5, 2005Take a look at these two photographs of my son Jim taken a month or so after he was born (and, as he would be quick to point out, nearly 14 years ago). Which is more memorable?
It may depend on your age. It's natural for your priorities to change as you get older, and so it seems, you may have a different response to pictures depicting emotions. Your kids grow up and leave home, and suddenly Little League and Disney seem less significant. Perhaps fine wine and opera rise up to fill that void. Later still, you begin to think about retirement, and gradually it seems more important to reach…
dmunger | November 29, 2005Do you ever wonder if your mood affects the way you think? I'm not talking about behaving more aggressively when you're angry or more passively when you're sad; I'm talking about the subtler impact on cognitive processing. Some recent research has indicated that we process things differently depending on whether we're in a positive or negative mood. People in good moods tend to make more connections between related items, while people in bad moods generally focus on what's in front of them.
Justin Storbeck and Gerald L. Clore realized that there may be a connection between this research on…
dmunger | November 23, 2005
Carmageddon 2 (source: Gamespot) is a gory racing game where players control drivers with names like "Max Damage" as they tear through city streets mowing down pedestrians and forcing competitors into bloody collisions. The game settings can be adjusted so that running down innocent bystanders actually increases a player's point total. Surely, if there's any video game that might raise a parent's ire, Carmageddon 2 is one of them.
Studies have shown that violent video games are more likely than non-violent games to induce aggressive behavior, even after very short playing sessions. But more…
dmunger | November 8, 2005In face to face conversation, we often look away from the person we're speaking with. Somewhat paradoxically, the closer people sit to their conversation companions, the less often they look at them.
But other factors influence how often we avert our gaze, too. When we are asked personal questions, or difficult questions, or possibly when we are trying to deceive, we look away more often. When we talk with someone via a remote video monitor, we look at them more often than when we engage in the same type of conversation face to face.
So what's the cause of this behavior? Do several different…
dmunger | November 3, 2005Just listening to music, despite the hype associated with the "Mozart Effect," appears to have little influence on IQ or other abilities. It does seem to make us more aroused and put us in a better mood, which can improve performance on tests, but it doesn't actually make us any smarter. But what about actual long-term training in music? Clearly musical training can make us better able to perform and appreciate music, but can it also improve our performance in areas? With its mathematically based notation system, music has been shown to improve mathematical reasoning skills. But surely music…
dmunger | October 28, 2005More and more human conversations are taking place online. While I don't do instant messaging the way my kids like to, I'm much more likely to contact a friend via e-mail than to pick up the phone. Here at Cognitive Daily and at other online discussion forums, I've built relationships with commenters who I've never seen or even e-mailed.
While the next leap in online communications—videoconferencing—is in its infancy, an intermediate form is beginning to show promise. Called a Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE), it enables people to have a virtual online conference by creating digital…
dmunger | October 18, 2005When asked to indicate their "deepest, closest, most intimate relationship," thirty-six percent of college students name a friend (as opposed to a family member or boyfriend/girlfriend) Friendships are clearly important, but there have been many fewer studies of friends than family or marriage. Consider "locus of control" research (whether individuals blame problems or positive aspects of their relationships on chance/the actions of others, or on their own attitudes and actions). There have been dozens of studies on locus of control and marriage, but only two focusing on friendships, both…
dmunger | October 13, 2005Dozens of studies have confirmed both psychological and physical benefits of exercise. The results seem clear enough: a regular program of cardiovascular exercise has been shown not only to promote physical well being, but also to abate depression, decrease anxiety, and improve overall quality of life. But James Annesi noted that most of these studies were implemented the same way: participants agree to a preset program of exercise, carefully controlled and monitored by experimenters. Might the psychological benefits only be an artifact of all the attention they were getting? It's possible,…
dmunger | October 12, 2005When 64-year-old teacher Robert Davis was beaten by the New Orleans police for public drunkenness despite the fact that he hadn't had a drink for 25 years, you might expect him to feel angry about it. You wouldn't be surprised if he held a grudge against the police for many years thereafter. Yet instead, he said he didn't blame the police for their actions. He could understand why they might have suspected he was a threat.
According to a study by Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet, Thomas Ludwig, and Kelly Vander Laan, what he did wasn't just a nice thing to do, it may also have been good for his…
dmunger | October 6, 2005Modern biological explanations for disease have not been around for long. Before the nineteenth century, explanations of disease transmittal would never have involved "viruses" or even "germs." Yet today, even the youngest children know that germs can make you sick—at least, in Western cultures they do. But what about other cultures? The folk tradition in Vietnam attributes disease to evil spirits and magic spells. As modern medicine now permeates nearly all cultures, do cultures such as Vietnam's similarly modify their understanding of the relationship between magic and medicine?
Simone…
dmunger | September 30, 2005As early as 2002, 60 percent of the total Japanese population (this includes infants, the elderly, and the infirm) subscribed to a cell phone service. Though the phones are banned in public schools, parents were buying them for their kids anyway—mainly, they said, to control their behavior and build closer bonds. Naturally, the kids soon figured out that they were best used to call and send text messages to their friends. As kids became more attached to their cell phones, parents became concerned that the kids were substituting them for face-to-face relationships.
With these concerns in mind…
dmunger | September 26, 2005Gender and racial differences in standardized test scores have received a lot of coverage in the popular press. An article in yesterday's New York Times discussed how simply combining populations with different economic status can result in increased test scores—apparently just being around kids with different educational expectations can have an impact on performance.
We've talked here about research which indicates that simply reminding test-takers of stereotypes about their gender or racial group can impact their performance. But these tests are typically conducted on adults. Do children…
dmunger | September 15, 2005Music can be used to convey a range of emotion, from sadness to happiness, from anger to fear. We use music to help fall asleep at night, and to wake up in the morning. Its effect on our mood may be enough to improve our performance on a range of intellectual tasks. But where do these effects come from? Are we born with an association between music and emotion, or does it develop as we grow older?
Studies have found some evidence for an appreciation of music even in infants. Babies as young as 9 months old prefer musical scales to monotonic scales—the notes in the western musical scale do not…
dmunger | September 13, 2005Click on the image below to be taken to a quicktime movie showing 9 different faces. When the movie is finished playing, drag the slider back and forth to pick the face you think is the most attractive.
The faces are composite images—"average" faces made by morphing together 48 different photos. Previous research has shown that people typically perceive average faces as more beautiful than unusual faces (and here we've written about how easy it is to change our conception of "average"). But what about people from different racial groups? Would a Caucasian perceive an "average" South Asian…
dmunger | September 12, 2005My favorite bike shop has a photo of bicyclists lighting up cigarettes for each other as they rode along during a 1920s stage of the Tour de France. After getting over our astonishment that they can actually manage to light cigarettes without even getting off their bikes, we look at the photo today and think "how could those riders not know what those cigarettes were doing to their lungs?"
Surely today's athletes know that using drugs ranging from nicotine to alcohol to cocaine can seriously impair their ability to perform in competition, don't they? Supporters of scholastic athletics point…
dmunger | September 7, 2005How do we reconcile the variety of results that have been found with respect to the Mozart effect—the idea that the music of Mozart can lead to improved performance on spatial ability tests? With some researchers appearing to have found no effect at all, and others claiming dramatic effects, who are we to believe? In just the research we've reviewed here at Cognitive Daily, we've got Ivanov and Geake reporting a pronounced effect for both Mozart and Bach, Jackson and Tlauka arguing that there's no Mozart effect for route learning, and McKelvie and Low declaring "final curtains for the Mozart…
dmunger | August 31, 2005
This is an image from the video game Asheron's Call 2 (source: mmorpg.com). Does playing such a game, involving regular practicing (albeit in a virtual environment) of repetitive, violent acts, increase our general level of aggression? A recent article in New York Times says no, citing a study by "a researcher at the University of Illinois," which found, according to the article, that "violent video games have no 'long-term,' or permanent, effects on aggressive behavior." Interesting, considering the article I discussed in yesterday's post apparently found exactly the opposite.
With some…
dmunger | August 30, 2005Steven Johnson is a writer who I very much admire. I'm particularly impressed by his defense of video games and other technologies in his book Everything Bad is Good For You. However, in defending the good aspects of video games, he has also felt compelled to downplay their negative effects. For example, a recent blog post argues vehemently that video game violence does not lead to aggression. He makes his argument by examining a recent study which found a link between violent game exposure and aggression. I'd like to do something a bit unusual for Cognitive Daily. First, I'll examine the…