All entries tagged "psychology".
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Wikipedia:
Ironic processing is the psychological process whereby an individual's deliberate attempts to suppress or avoid certain thoughts (thought suppression) render those thoughts more persistent. A classic example is Fyodor Dostoevsky's quote from Winter notes on summer impressions: "Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute."
From a Times Online article about a study by psychologist Richard Wiseman who "lost" a few hundred wallets with different or no pictures in them:
When faced with the photograph of the baby people were far more likely to send the wallet back, the study found. In fact, only one in ten were hard-hearted enough not to do so. With no picture to tug at the emotions, just one in seven were sent back.
(via 3qd)
The "broken windows" theory of urban sociology states that people are significantly less likely to break into houses or throw litter on the sidewalk if everything in the neighbourhood is clean and orderly. As soon as there is one broken window or a piece of litter somewhere, things start to get worse. Results from the theory led to New York City's "zero tolerance" strategy of crime prevention in the 1990's that most certainly helped to drop the crime rates consecutively for years.
The theory is probably able to explain comment spam on the Internet, too.
I just did the Jung Typology Test and ended up as an ENFP (Extraversion, iNtuition, Feeling, Perception; more here and here). They say that's like Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Stephen Spielberg or Joan Baez – all of which are/were great computer scientists. The outcome is not a big surprise if you think about it, but I'm kind of surprised nonetheless. Not that I care about this kind of stuff, but GO TAKE THE TEST, it's awesome. (Sorry, trying to stay in character or something.)
An hour-long Radiolab episode about "Choice".
Why do some people seem better at making decisions than others? Should you listen to your head or your heart? We turn up the volume on the voices in our heads and try to make sense of the babble. Forget free will, some important decisions could come down to a steaming cup of coffee.
They mention a lot of interesting experiments and observations that mostly lead to one conclusion: You are always worse off when you think too much about the pros and cons before you make your decision. Even if you choose something good, you will keep on wondering whether there would have been an even better option.
