Tom Stafford's Blog, page 148

Square eyes are a window to the soul

[image error]A video streaming site called Documentary Heaven has, among other things, a stack load of high quality psychology documentaries for your viewing pleasure.

There drawn from TV so they're a bit of a mixed bunch from the lamentable BBC series 'The Human Mind', to the excellent biography of mathematician and subject of 'A Beautiful Mind' John Nash and the simply sublime programme 'Beyond Good and Evil' on Friedrich Nietzsche.

The definition of psychology is a little bit wide, but there's plenty of ...

Don't throw the baby out with the cortisol

[image error]I have a bullshit switch. It gets triggered when I hear certain phrases. 'Neuroplasticity' is one, 'hemisphere' is another and 'raises dopamine' is a regular button pusher. That's not to say people can't use these phrases while talking perfect sense, but I find it useful that they put me on my guard.

Most recently, I've found the phrase 'raises cortisol' to be a useful way of alerting me to the fact that the subsequent words may be a few data points short of a bar graph - potentially some...

The ups and downs of smouldering talent

[image error]In Touched with Fire psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison argued that history's great artists were more likely to have experienced mood problems and especially the ups and down of 'manic depression' that fuelled their intense creativity. The idea is attractive, although her book relied on a case by case interpretation of often long-dead figures.

Nevertheless, a new study on almost three quarters of a million Swedish young people has found remarkable support for the theory where high school...

Lost letter days

[image error]One of the most delightful ways of testing social opinion has got to be the 'lost letter' technique, where researchers 'lose' paid up letters addressed to various controversial organisations to see how many get dropped back in the post box.

A new study, led by psychologist Tracey Witte, used exactly this technique and suggests that stigma concerning suicide may be improving as they found no difference in the amount of 'lost letters' that reached their final destination between those addressed ...

Clutter blindness

[image error]NPR has an interesting interview on the phenomenon of compulsive hoarding where people will be almost unable to throw out used items and will collect mountains of clutter in their houses to the point where they can no longer see the walls.

The discussion is with psychologists and hoarding researchers Randy Frost and Gail Steketee and has lots of novel insights on a recognised but not well-understood behaviour.

I was struck by the bit where the interviewer highlights that lots of hoarders...

Carrot junky

[image error]I originally thought that this might be one of the traditionally light-hearted articles about medical problems in fictional characters published around Christmas but it appeared in a October 1996 edition of the Australia and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry.

I don't have access to the full text of the article so I can't say for sure but it seems to be serious. God knows how it got published but it remains a fascinating if bizarre insight into one of the lesser touted 'addictions'.

Carrot...

The sexploitation psychosis

[image error]Sex Madness was a curious 1938 sexploitation film that claimed to warn of the dangers of syphilis but was really an excuse to show risqué sex scenes that would have otherwise been banned by the film censors of the time.

As you might expect, watching the film now it seem remarkable that anyone would see anything in it worth censoring, but the concern about 'sex madness' was not entirely fictional.

Untreated syphilis typically leads to neurosyphilis where the disease attacks the nervous system...

Eight minutes of incompetence

[image error]ABC Radio National's Science Show has a fantastic short segment on the 'unskilled and unaware of it' effect, also known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, where people with low levels of ability in a certain field vastly over-rate their talents because they lack the skills to judge their own competence.

It is my second favourite cognitive bias in psychology (after Emily Pronin's discovery of the 'bias blind spot') and the study also demonstrated the paradoxical effect whereby improving people's...

Ego tripping the Freud fantastic

[image error]I just got sent this fantastic article from The Guardian in 2006 where neuropsychologist Paul Broks discusses Freud's legacy in light of the burgeoning brain sciences.

As always, Broks writes brilliantly, and the piece starts with a wryly observed domestic scene.

One Sunday morning, when he was four years old, my son climbed into bed with his mother. I was downstairs making coffee. "Mum," I heard him saying as I returned, "I'd like to kill Daddy." It was a dispassionate declaration, said...

2010-05-07 Spike activity

Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:

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Wired Science covers a rather nasty case of the consequences of long-term laughing gas abuse.

Washing your hands reduces cognitive dissonance according to a new study covered by the Brainstorm blog.

Scientific American has another one of Jesse Bering's excellent columns - this time on the mystery of pubic hair.

Different types of synaesthetic experiences involve different brain mechanisms. Great coverage of a new study by Neurophilosophy.

New...