9 posts tagged “psychology”
After reading many books talking about priming studies, I have an idea to use this knowledge for my benefit. It will be a website which collects clips of confident, assertive women for women who are less confident and assertive to view daily, before going to work, in order to subconsciously influence/prime them to act in a more assertive way. People could submit other clips into other categories to help prime others to act in certain ways--for example, perhaps a loud person needs to work on taking it down a notch--these people could go to the calm and composed women section and view clips. Perhaps a quiet person would like to prime themselves to act in a more enthusiastic way, so they could go to a section of enthusiastic clips. The fact is priming has been proven in countless studies to work! The latest place I read about priming experiments was in Predictably Irrational, a book about behavioral economics on the non-fiction bestseller list right now. Look out for a link on my blog to this new website, and please submit any suggestions and comments below!
I saw this book on evolutionary psychology in the bookstore.
DC: So give us a hint. Why do beautiful people actually have more daughters?
SK: The basic idea is this: Whenever parents have genetic traits they can pass on to their children that are more valuable for boys than for girls, then they have more sons than daughters. Conversely, whenever parents have genetic traits they can pass on to their children that are more valuable for girls than for boys, then they have more daughters than sons. Physical attractiveness — being beautiful — is good for both boys and girls, but it’s much more advantageous for girls. Physical attractiveness of a woman is one of the most important considerations for men when they select both long-term and short-term mates, but a man’s physical attractiveness is important for women only when she’s looking for short-term mates. Women like to have affairs with good-looking men, but they don’t necessarily want to marry them, unless of course they are also rich and powerful.
So beautiful daughters will be more likely to take full advantage of their physical attractiveness than beautiful sons. Beautiful daughters are more likely to pass on their genes successfully to the next generation than beautiful sons, because they are more likely to find themselves in stable marriages to desirable spouses. In a representative sample of 3,000 young Americans, those who are “very attractive” had 36% greater odds of having a daughter compared to everyone else. Similarly, studies have found that big and tall parents are more likely to have sons, and short and thin parents are more likely to have daughters, because body size is more of an advantage to men than to women. Women are attracted to big and tall men much more than men are attracted to big and tall women.
OH WOW. Check out this free quiz to test your knowledge of microexpressions. Since I own an in depth version of this, I did great. I'll give you a clue: contempt is a unilateral expression. Very fun.
This is a blog of a person who is a human lie detector--a truth wizard--as identified by Maureen o'sullivan, collaborator of Paul Ekman ...see article the Naked Face by Malcolm Gladwell or the book Blink. SHe watches stuff on the news like and tells you what the people are really thinking. SHe's weird alright, but her analysis is incredible! It's called eyes for lies.
Agree or disagree strongly or slightly with the following:
This is one of my favorite articles. The Naked Face by Malcolm Gladwell about Paul Ekman, profiled in BLINK. You won't be sorry if you read this. this article probably sparked my interest in all things of this nature, social psychologists, body language, etc...also, on gladwell.com there is a list of books you should read if you like Blink. Whenever i want something of this nature to read, i use this list. It has never led me astray. I especially loved Strangers to Ourselves--this book really changed the way i think. He also has a blog
| GENERAL Strangers To Ourselves: Discovering The Adaptive Unconscious |
In Blink, I probably owe a bigger intellectual debt to Tim Wilson (and his longtime collaborator, Jonathan Schooler) than anyone else, and Strangers to Ourselves is probably the most influential book I've ever read. It also inspired two, separate New Yorker articles of mine: "Getting Over It" and "Personality Plus." In fact, I once gave a talk at the University of Virginia--where Wilson teaches. He was sitting in the front row, and I had the distinctly uncomfortable feeling, half way through, that I was simply giving the audience a kind of popularized version of Wilson's own work. Imagine giving a talk on physics, in 1910, and saying "you know, there's this thing called relativity," and then spotting Einstein in the front row. In any case, "Strangers to Ourselves," is a beautifully written book. In it, Wilson asks the question: what, at the end of the day, can we really know about ourselves? His answer: not much. Or, at least, not nearly as much as we think we can know. But it's a tribute to Wilson, that in giving that answer he is never disheartening or depressing.
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I also loved this eye opening book from the reading list.
The Illusion Of
Conscious Will.
I recommend this book with a caveat. The good news is that Wegner is an extraordinary powerful thinker, and the topic of this book is profoundly important. Given that much of what we do we do unconsciously, Wegner asks, what then is free will? The answer, he says, is that free will is largely an illusion. It's very hard to read this book and not come away a little discomforted about human behavior. But here's the caveat. This is not an easy book. It's not that Wegner is a bad writer. It's that the topics his discussing are pretty challenging. So buy it if you are up for a bit of work-out.
