Psychology
clock | April 7, 2007Here, have a go at it. Even better, if you can get the actual paper and dissect it on your blog, let me know so I can link to that. Have fun!
Good Behavior, Religiousness May Be Genetic:
A new study in Journal of Personality shows that selfless and social behavior is not purely a product of environment, specifically religious environment. After studying the behavior of adult twins, researchers found that, while altruistic behavior and religiousness tended to appear together, the correlation was due to both environmental and genetic factors.
According to study author Laura Koenig, the…
omnibrain | April 7, 2007Ok, I'm not really sure if kids get it right, but after all - they do have all sorts of experience with school buses. Perhaps they do get it right more than adults, after all - experience will trump age and straight up smarts most days of the week.
Here's the test:
Look at the images carefully. Which way is the bus moving?
http://killersurvey.com/survey_code.php?sqs=1&id=509">
Ok really.. the only possible answers are right and left.
The answer is below the fold...
Keep scrolling for the results
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According to this site:
The…
clock | April 6, 2007My SciBlings Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet just published an article in 'Science' (which, considering its topic is, ironically, behind the subscription wall, but you can check the short press release) about "Framing Science"
Carl Zimmer, PZ Myers, Mike Dunford (also check the comments here), John Fleck, Larry Moran, Dietram Scheufele, Kristina Chew, Randy Olson, James Hrynyshyn, Paul Sunstone and Alan Boyle have, so far, responded and their responses (and the comment threads) are worth your time to read. Chris and Matt respond to some of them. Matt has more in-depth explanations here, here and…
omnibrain | April 6, 2007Actually, more appropriately,
"Hey do you believe in past lives, aliens or CIA mind control?"
"yes!"
"Do get the feeling that you owe someone money?"
"yes!"
"Yeah, you owe me some money"
There's an interesting article in the March issue of Consciousness and Cognition about the link between false memories and the totally out there belief of reincarnation.
Here's the basic design and results of the study from Live Science/MSNBC
Subjects were asked to read aloud a list of 40 non-famous names, and then, after a two-hour wait, told that they were going to see a list consisting of three types of…
clock | April 5, 2007Energy Use Study Demonstrates Remarkable Power Of Social Norms:
Most people want to be normal. So, when we are given information that underscores our deviancy, the natural impulse is to get ourselves as quickly as we can back toward the center. Marketers know about this impulse, and a lot of marketing makes use of social norms. This is especially true of campaigns targeting some kind of public good: reducing smoking or binge drinking, for example, or encouraging recycling.
This tendency may not always be used for good. This is, after all, the idea behind the Overton Window, which the Right…
ksharpe | April 4, 2007Starting today, ScienceBlogs is introducing a new-and-improved feature that allows you, dear reader, to tap into the brain-power and expertise of the ScienceBlogs collective mind—all to answer your most burning questions about matters scientific.
Every couple of weeks, a ScienceBlogs blogger will craft a succinct, specific answer to a question from his or her area of expertise. The answer will be linked from the ScienceBlogs main page, and it's our hope that response and commentary and even more questions will flow freely after.
The kick-off question for the series is inspired by modern…
omnibrain | April 4, 2007This topic usually falls into the realm of ESP and parapsychology but there is no reason that it has to. For starters check out this snippet from a Wired article:
"It was slightly strange at first," Wächter says, "though on the bike, it was great." He started to become more aware of the peregrinations he had to make while trying to reach a destination. "I finally understood just how much roads actually wind," he says. He learned to deal with the stares he got in the library, his belt humming like a distant chain saw. Deep into the experiment, Wächter says, "I suddenly realized that my…
omnibrain | April 3, 2007I've been waiting for a long time for major press to finally come around and start telling people how Baby Einstein videos or listening to Mozart isn't going to make your baby into a genius. If you have a baby and are wondering whether a certain product will help your baby become smarter, there is a good rule to follow. If it's on TV it's not going to help and if it costs more than $10 it's not going to help either. I'm sure watching these videos are probably better than kids watching random flashing colors on a TV, but come on.
Here's a snippet of an article from USA Today (Which I'd…
omnibrain | April 2, 2007Is this an April Fools Joke?!
Here's a challenge for everyone - see how many you can debunk!
1. Men's brains are larger, but as they age, they also shrink faster than women's brains.
2. Women's brains operate at a higher temperature, due to burning more glucose.
3. Women use more of their brains when they think.
4. In general, men are better at math and women are better at language skills. This is suggested by research on the brain that has found that the "gray matter" in men's brains is more active during thought while the "white matter" in women's brains is more active. Gray matter is the…
clock | March 31, 2007When I ask a guy for something, I may get Yes as an answer half the time and No half the time. Yes mostly means Yes and No means No. If the answer is "Let me think about it", that means usually that within 24 hours or so I will get a definitve Yes or No answer.
If I ask a woman for something, I rarely ever get a No. I may get Yes half the time and "Let me think about it" the other half. And moreover, Yes need not necessarily mean Yes, and "Let me think about it" ALWAYS means No - as in: I never hear about it again from that person.
On the surface, that sounds like dishonesty and playing…
omnibrain | March 29, 2007This type of new age crap bothers me a whole lot. There's always a whole lot of words and ideas but no content or real evidence. It bothers me even more when evidence is used that is so very distal to the actual point. Physics and vibrations?! you've got to be kidding me!
So enjoy the video and the text below ;)
Everything in our known, physical universe is made up of energy. All the things you can see, touch, and feel are made up of energy. Your computer, your bed, your clothes, your music, your body, other people, trees, the wind, are all made up of vibrating energy. Even the things…
omnibrain | March 28, 2007It seems that college dropout of Facebook fame, Mark Zuckererg, may need to go back to college and take some psychology courses to learn something about aging and intelligence.
According to VentureBeat, Zuckerberg told attendees at the Y Combinator Startup School event at Stanford this weekend that old people (you know, over 30), are just well, a little slow.
"I want to stress the importance of being young and technical," he stated, adding that successful start-ups should only employ young people with technical expertise. (Zuckerberg also apparently missed the class on employment and…
omnibrain | March 27, 2007Remember those classic psychology experiments where people walk around for a couple days with glasses that either flip the image up/down or right/left and then their brain seems to adjust to the swap? I'm curious about the effect and would love to get a hold of some of the glasses they used.
Does anyone know of a commercial (or have one they can send me) pair of goggles that will do a left right image swap?
ksharpe | March 27, 2007Feeling irritated? Getting blown off course by the emails pinging into your inbox, or the six open tabs in your web browser? Take a deep breath...but also, if you can, take a nap.
A Dutch researcher named Harm Veling has conducted research into distraction and concluded that the state of being tired compromises the ability of a person's brain to filter out distracting stimuli. Veling gave standard tests, in which words to be remembered are interspersed with 'distracting' extraneous words, to normal subjects and to subjects who were mentally tired. He found that normal subjects are able to…
omnibrain | March 27, 2007Sometimes when I'm futzing around the web looking for interesting pieces of news a theme just seems to pop out at me. Today it happens to be the over reliance and distractions of technology.
The first story is an old one...The elderly German motorist set out sans a clue of what route(s) he'd be taking to reach his destination, but obviously felt that his trusty navigation unit knew far more about the highways and byways than he did. After blatantly ignoring a prominent "closed for construction" sign, he threw common sense to the wind and put that 4MATIC system to good use by wheeling over "a…
omnibrain | March 26, 2007Got you! haha... just kidding ;)
This story is a bit less controversial than the whole Bell Curve thing ;)
According to a EurekaAlert press release,
Although intelligence is generally thought to play a key role in children's early academic achievement, aspects of children's self-regulation abilities--including the ability to alternately shift and focus attention and to inhibit impulsive responding--are uniquely related to early academic success and account for greater variation in early academic progress than do measures of intelligence. Therefore, in order to help children from low-income…
omnibrain | March 26, 2007I just added two new blogs to the blogroll (which I hate doing for some reason).
The first is Ginny's who is a staffer here at ScienceBlogs and is a freelance science writer. Her blog is named Sequitur. You can also find links to all her science writing on the sidebar. What's that blog name about Ginny?
The second blog I discovered when Kate left some good comments on some of my posts :)The Anterior Commissure "was started as a new year's resolution with the intention of developing a better understanding of the field of science in a more global context. It has become a horrible…
omnibrain | March 23, 2007I found this entertaining snipit on some random website. I never realized that Tony Robbins (whose whole sctick revolves around firewalking) was such a fraud. It seems that you can delete a single memory (this time without that crazy drug) by visualizing it, making it black and white and then 'sending' it away from you.
Here check it out:
With this exercise you can actually 'delete' anything at all. I learned this memory-delete exercise from Tony Robbins, and it's based on the mental visualization principles from Neuro Linguistic Programming. Here's what you do.
1. Make a picture in your…
clock | March 21, 2007Eavesdropping Nuthatches Appear To Understand Chickadees In Distress:
If Dr. John Watson had been chronicling the work of Christopher Templeton rather than the exploits of Sherlock Holmes, he might have entitled the latest research by Templeton "The Adventure of the Avian Eavesdroppers." The University of Washington doctoral student has found the first example of an animal making sophisticated decisions about the danger posed by a predator from the information contained in the alarm calls of another species.
Grrrrl explains.
omnibrain | March 20, 2007It was one year ago today that I made the first post to Omni Brain. I never imagined we would do this well.
In the last year Omni Brain has undergone many many changes, the biggest of which have been Sandra of Neurofuture fame joining the blog, and moving to ScienceBlogs.
We started with not-even 3000 page views in our first full month and now receive tens of thousands of page views and visitors - which is pretty great for a smart ass little science blog! Our Technorati ranking has also grown by leaps and bounds; near 14,000 today.
Thanks everyone, for reading and for all your lively…