it's been a while . . .

Well . . . hello, hello, hello. I know it's been a little while since I have written a post. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the blog. I have just kind of been away from technology lately. Mostly because I have . . . . gotten MARRIED! That's right! The big day was: June 2, 2007. I don't want to get too personal and all, but it definitely was one of the best days/nights of my life. We just recently got back from our honeymoon, plus I have started my new summer research job at Eastern Virginia Medical School, so I have just haven't had the time or resources for new posts.

Well, anyways, I just wanted to say that I haven't forgot about the blog. And I have a couple of really cool posts planned out and will post over the next couple of days. One will likely be about the recent HBES conference held at William and Mary, and of which I was a volunteer before I left for the wedding. It is also worth the note that my good friend John, over at Evolutionary Psychology, had presented some of his research there. His talk was awesome!

Another post will probably be about "simulation sickness," which is like motion sickness that people feel when they are on a driving simulator. This is something I'm learning about at my new job. And lastly, for awhile now I've been wanting to write a post about our ability to work with numbers. So keep a look out for these, plus any other interesting psych. news that I might post on here. I have a lot of unpacking, cleaning, working and more traveling to do, but I'll have at least two new posts up by Sunday.

Oh well, until then . . . have a good week!

Stephen Colbert interviews Jared Diamond

Here's another hilarious Colbert interview! This time he takes on Jared Diamond, the famous biologist and author of Guns, Germs and Steel. Even though the book has been out for awhile, it was the topic of most of the conversation.

For those who don't know, his book is about how the cultures of Eurasia were able to conquer the rest of the world, because they were essentially more lucky. Well, in the sense that they happened to inhabit more fertile land with better crops and animals that were easier to domesticate. This gave the peoples of Europe and Asia a considerable advantage over those of Africa and the Americas. This is just a very brief overview though, so if you haven't already done so, you should definitely check out the book!

Overall, Colbert displays his usual wit and humor in his questioning, but I think Diamond survived without a hint of confusion or agitation. Go check it out!

New MSc in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology

The Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford has developed a new program where candidates can earn a Master's of Science in cognitive and evolutionary anthropology! Awesome!

The degree is earned over the course of 12 months. Students, along with the usual research method and statistic courses, study the course of human evolution from a biological, cognitive and behavioral perspective, while analyzing how the mind creates culture as well. The new program looks incredibly interesting to me.

Here's a very quick snippet summarizing the program:

"Arguably, Homo sapiens are the only animals capable of genuine language, culture, and religion. We are distinguished by our laughter, singing, rituals, and art, as well as our intelligence. What about our evolution and our resulting cognitive equipment make us human? Make culture possible? The Institute for Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology's Masters program explores these issues through the lenses of contemporary research in cognitive and evolutionary anthropology."

This is good news! It's great to see the incorporation of research dealing with human evolution with that of human and animal cognition. It's a mistake to ignore the fact that the human mind is a product of natural selection, just as any other part of the body!

The program starts in October of 2007!

E.O. Wilson and the Encyclopedia of Life . . .

Edge has a link to an awesome video of E.O. Wislon.

It's footage of Wislon accepting his 2007 TED (Technology, Entertainment & Design) prize, which includes a $100,000 check. Here's some detail about what the TED prize actually is:

"The prize was introduced in 2005, and it is unlike any other award. Here's why. Although the winners receive a prize of $100,000 each, that's the least of what they get. The real prize is that they are granted a WISH. A wish to change the world. There are no formal restrictions on the wish. We ask our winners to think big and to be creative. They are permitted several months of dreaming, brainstorming and planning. Then they come to TED, and during a special session at the conference, they unveil their wish. The goal is that it creates an incredible sense of excitement and common purpose. It inspires the TED community, and all those who hear about the wish, to offer their help in making the wish come true."

Well, Wilson's wish is to create an encyclopedia of life! This is supposed to be a web-based collection of data created by scientists and amateurs on every aspect of the biosphere. What an incredible task! We know so little about nature right now. But I guess that's really the purpose of it . . . to get people interested in learning and discovering more about the biosphere. In his talk, he discusses various threats to life on our planet as well. And there's also a really cool video montage of nature during his talk, including micro-organisms, insects, monkeys and people. So go check it out!

Richard Dawkins interview

There's an awesome interview of Richard Dawkins over at Cosmic Afterthoughts. It was pretty good, so I recommend checking it out.

For those of you who don't already know, Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist from Oxford University who popularized the view that natural selection acts through the survival of competing genes, and that our physical and behavioral traits are adaptations due to the genes that promote their propagation best. So you can see how he's been an influence to evolutionary psychology I'm sure. I mean, he's basically laid the foundation for it! This argument of his was laid out in the 1976 release of The Selfish Gene.

Lately though, he has been gaining more attention for his active popular science writing, unabashed atheism and promotion of skepticism. This is what the interview concerns itself with mostly. They discuss his newest book, The God Delusion, and his views of why it's important to promote reason over faith. I think it was a generally good interview, definitely not as hostile as some I have seen in the past. Whether you agree with him or not, I still recommend checking it out, as well you should check out his books! My favorites are The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. (Thanks to pharyngula for posting the Cosmic Afterthoughts link!)

On another note, google has recently added a feature to blogger, in which readers can watch youtube and google videos without leaving the blog page. Pretty cool! And if you haven't noticed, I have added such a videobar to my blog. At the moment videos from Steven Pinker and Philip Zimbardo are on rotation, just because I have mentioned them a lot on this blog. I also threw in some banjo videos for good measure! To check them out, you just click on one of the videos and it'll load at the top of the page . . . well under my title that is. So anyways, check them out, let me know what you think . . . does it look messy? Should I keep them? Comments are welcome!

New Evolutionary Psychology Blog!

My good friend, and fellow grad student in the William & Mary psychology department, has just started a new blog about evolutionary psychology! You can find it over at brain and evolution. I'm pretty excited about it actually. He's a bright guy and has already came up with some interesting posts. He's new to the "blogosphere," so please go check out his site and say hello and all that stuff!

Well, on another note, this is the last week of classes! I'm pretty excited, but I just have loads of work to do . . . yeah, what else is new right? Well, exams are coming up next week, but in between now and then I'll fit in some time for new posts.

I'm not sure what I'll be doing after schools out, besides blogging of course. I know I'll be doing some research and working as a TA for a class during the second summer session and all . . . and I'll probably be working on topics for my Master's thesis. We'll see how that goes I guess. One thing that I am looking forward to is that the 19th annual conference for the Human Behavior and Evolution Society will be held here at The College of William and Mary around the end of this month. I'm siked! Well, that's all for now!

more Zimbardo . . .

Edge has another video of Philip Zimbardo. It's pretty good. He mostly talks about the Nazi killings and trials from a social psychological perspective and again refers to his "Stanford Prison Experiment."

How do seemingly "normal" people commit evil acts? What about the flip-side? How do normal people commit heroic acts? These are questions that interests Zimbardo.

Check it out!

MRI-enabled brain surgery

NewScientistTech has a cool post about a new device developed by researchers in Canada to help doctors perform risky surgeries.

"NeuroArm is the first surgical robot to be compatible with MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), its makers claim. This will enable neurosurgeons to perform their riskiest work while patients lie within an MRI machine, giving a clear 3D picture of even the smallest nerves. However, doctors are still on hand to intervene if serious complications arise."

I'm not really sure if this is what it really looks like or not. I just typed "neuroarm" in google images, and this is what I got.

Regardless, it seems like a really cool idea, but man it's expensive . . . $24 million in development. Wow!

Almost human?

There's a really interesting article in the Science section of the NY Times. It's basically a summary of the work on chimpanzees and their similarities to humans, covering work from Jane Goodall and Frans de Waal among others.

"Chimps display a remarkable range of behavior and talent. They make and use simple tools, hunt in groups and engage in aggressive, violent acts. They are social creatures that appear to be capable of empathy, altruism, self-awareness, cooperation in problem solving and learning through example and experience. Chimps even outperform humans in some memory tasks."

Overall, it's a really cool article, so check it out if you can!

You just get me . . .

Now this looks interesting. I received this link through an email from the listserv for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. It's a social-networking site developed by social and personality psychologists as a tool for use by researchers interested in how well people can read each other's personalities.

"We know a ton about what people think of others, but hardly anything about whether they are right. In about a tenth of a second, people make up their minds whether others are likable and competent. But are they accurate? Not always. You can tell if someone is extraverted and disciplined quicker than if they are neurotic and competitive (Watson, 1989). Oddly, if you see someone's room or office, it helps you "get" them (Gosling, Ko, Mannarelli & Morris, 2002). And when you finally get close to someone, you are more accurate than when you were strangers, but few couples are ever perfect. How about online? Can you really judge what someone is like from their profile? And how about the other way around? Does your profile really tell people who you are? Research on this is only beginning (see Vazire & Gosling, 2004). Help us fill in this huge gap in our knowledge by trying - really trying - to guess what others are like. And see if you can make the most truthful profile you can. On our site, that's what it's all about."

Basically, it's a little online experiment where participants take a personality test (based upon the 5-factor theory of personality) and then they have to guess how each other scored on the test. All questions are scored using a real psychological formula too. As far as the "social-networking" is concerned, you can choose how accurate a person must be in guessing your personality before they can contact you.

It seems like a cool idea. I guess we'll see how it takes off.

unbelievably awful

I'm sure that everyone knows already, so there's no need to post any press about it, but I feel that I do need to say something.

Yesterday's massacre at Virginia Tech. seems so unreal. It's like a very bad dream. Being a Virginia resident all my life, this isn't something that I would have ever expected. My heart goes out to VT and all the friends and families of lost loved ones. It was a horrible incident. Virginia Tech is a great school, and it shouldn't go down in the history books as the place where the deadliest school shooting occurred.

Mostly everyone that I know that has gone to VT has graduated, so obviously I can't put myself into the position of those whose loved ones are currently at the school. But, for what it's worth, I'm sorry and I have nothing but the best wishes for all those at Tech.

For those interested, there's a compilation of scienceblogger posts over at Cognitive Daily concerning the murderous rampage.

Today in the history of psychology . . .

One of my all-time favorite psychologists was born this day in 1922. This is, of course, the great Stanley Schachter. Schachter was a prolific social psychologist, who studied a wide range of topics. He investigated such issues as social influence, obesity, situational influences on emotion, and the psychological correlates of birth order. But what I'm most fond of, is his work on the need for affiliation.

Ever hear the phrase, "misery loves company," or even, "misery loves miserable company?" Well, this comes from Schachter's work on the affiliative tendency.

The need for affiliation seems to be a core motive that influences our day to day interactions, and yet not much was known about it. That is, until 1959 when Schachter published his book called, The Psychology of Affiliation. This work described several of his experimental studies conducted on the topic. Most interestingly, he found that in distressful situations, people tend to seek out others who are under similar circumstances. In other words, an increase of anxiety brings about an increase in the affiliative tendency.

In a creative experiment, he manipulated anxiety in two groups of participants. One group was the high anxiety group, while the other was the low anxiety group. Using deception, he told both groups that the experiment was about the effects of electric shock. Essentially, the high anxiety condition was shown the electrical apparatus and was told that they would receive extremely painful shocks. The low anxiety condition was not shown the electrical apparatus and was told that they would receive shocks, but the shocks would not hurt and instead would be more like a tickle. Then both groups were told that they could either wait in a waiting room by themselves while the experimenters got everything ready, or they could go into another waiting room with other people who were also participating in the experiment. Schachter found that those who were in the high anxiety condition chose to sit with people who were in the same situation as them. They chose this significantly more often than those in the low anxiety condition. These results were important for the field of social psychology, because not much was known, at the time, about the conditions that affected the need for affiliation.

I, myself, have always had an interest in social psychology, but it was coming across Schacter's work on affiliation in general that eventually led to my interest in social rejection and ostracism. It's not really even the "tip of the iceberg," when considering all the other major contributions that he had on the field. This just happens to be my favorite work of his. I mean, I could really write all day about it . . . but I won't. Well, anyways, if you're interested in the topic, pick up the book!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STANLEY SCHACHTER!

new way to view brain folds

A new tool has been developed by researchers from MIT, the Massachusetts General hospital and Havard Medical School to help investigate how the folds in the cerebral cortex develop and decay over time.

"By applying computer graphics techniques to brain images collected using magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, they have created a set of tools for tracking and measuring these folds over time. Their resulting model of cortical development may serve as a biomarker, or biological indicator, for early diagnosis of neurological disorders such as autism."

A new article describing their computational model of brain development has been published in the April issue of Transactions on Medical Imaging, a journal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

This seems like a pretty cool technology. It'll give scientists a better view of normal brain development. This development can then be compared with the abnormal development caused by various disorders, like schizophrenia. In effect, giving us a better picture of what is going wrong in these patients.

The press release can be found here.

A new journal

I just noticed that a new psychology journal is out. It is an open-access, peer-reviewed online journal called, The Journal of Social, Evolutionary & Cultural Psychology. And you can find it here.

And here's the brief description that the editors give:

"The Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology is an online initiative designed to bridge sub-disciplines of psychology in order to gain holistic insights into human behavior, emotion, cognition, and motivation. The perspectives of social, evolutionary, and cultural psychology each provide unique advantages for psychological investigation. Social psychology emphasizes individual functioning within the group; cultural psychology emphasizes the role of one's social environment and emergent cultural practice; and evolutionary psychology emphasizes the adaptive function of particular behaviors at the level of the individual. With this journal, we are providing a space for scholars interested in combining variations of these levels in the study of human psychology."

So far, there's only one article up, from the editors Rosemarie Sokol and Sarah Strout. It's a brief editiorial explaining the purpose of the journal in greater detail along a historical and philosophical perspective. The editors intend the journal to be a new home for theoretical and empirical articles that incorporate the three psychological perspectives to varying degrees. It looks promising to me, so if you have an interest in social, evolutionary or cultural psychology, then you should check it out on occasion. More articles are due out in May!

are these considered April showers?

Yeah, so it's snowing . . . in April! It's kind of weird. It hasn't really snowed in Virginia all winter, and now it's coming down like crazy. Oh well.

School's going pretty good. I've just been grading papers all week (and I'll be grading more this weekend!). Plus I've been collecting data for my first-year research project. I'm freaking excited about that!

Well, besides that, nothing new has really come up in the past week.

Except . . .

Going along with the last post, another Zimbardo interview is up on New York Times. It is mostly about his Standord Prison Experiment and its similarities with the abuses of Abu Ghraib. There's also an accompanying article with the video here. They're pretty good. Check them out if you haven't already done so!