Psychology: August 2007 Archive Page

Here's a collection of teaching tips for the first day of classes brought to us by Honolulu Community College (check their reference lists for more good sources, too). The Pig Personality Profile [try here -- DGJ] is frivolous fun, but probably a good icebreaker and something I might even use when I teach Memoir Writing again in 2005-6. I especially liked reviewing Joyce T. Povlacs' 101 Things You Can Do the First Three Weeks of Class. If your term is just getting started too, you might want to review this list.

Here's a carefully worded google search that results in a great sampler of more on this topic.  --Mike Arnzen

Our first day of classes isn't for another week. Today was a full day of meetings, with lots of slideshows bearing statistics about how many students are enrolled, how we are doing on various ongoing university goals, and so forth. I'll be chairing the undergraduate English program review committee, and I also volunteered to be part of an ad hoc committee implementing an undergraduate humanities conference next spring. We hope to encourage juniors to deliver research papers on campus, so that during their senior year they can apply to off-campus conferences. (I presented on academic panels with four undergraduates at two conferences, last year, and I'm excited by the prospect of establishing a more formal way to keep that momentum going.)

Getting ready for the students is foremost in my mind, even though I've got another full day of meetings tomorrow. So now that the kids are in bed I'm taking a moment to think about the first day of classes. I'm still casting about for a comfortable way to start the first day of classes. 

The internet news audience -- roughly a quarter of all Americans -- tends to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole. People who rely on the internet as their main news source express relatively unfavorable opinions of mainstream news sources and are among the most critical of press performance. --Internet News Audience Highly Critical of News Organizations (Pew Research Center)

The statistic I found most interesting is that those who prefer to watch TV news were twice as likely as internet news consumers to say news organizations care about the people they report on. Of course, that statistic might also mean that people who prefer empathy end up watching TV news, or that the TV news includes more emotional content.

We're a long way from the time when popular culture was full of heroic reporters who righted wrongs and stood up for truth.

Masahiro Mori's Uncanny Valley hypothesis states that, as artificial beings get closer to resembling real humans, the slightest errors or inaccuracies can shift our responses from empathy to disbelief and even disgust. It's why, in Toy Story, we love Woody and Buzz Lightyear, but are totally unmoved by Andy, their human owner.

This is something both videogame and movie special effects artists are having to grapple with now that processing power is allowing ever more naturalistic representations of human characters. And grappling with it they are. --Artists climb the uncanny valley (Guardian)

A good introduction to the subject.

Vicary and Fraley modeled their study on a 1979 Random House interactive fiction series, "Choose Your Own Adventure," which allowed the reader to select from multiple options at critical points in the story. Each choice directed the reader to a new scenario.

This approach appealed to the researchers because earlier studies of individual behavior in relationships asked participants to make choices based solely on descriptions of isolated events. The sequential nature of the new study was more like an actual relationship, Vicary said, in that it involved ongoing interactions with the same partner. --Simulated Relationships Offer Insight Into Real Ones (Science Daily)

Measuring test subjects' responses to tree fiction, with a branching plotline that reflects how positively or negatively the subjects responded to a simulated partner. Sounds cool.

The study had youngsters sample identical McDonald's foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test. Robinson said it was remarkable how children so young were already so influenced by advertising.

The study involved 63 low-income children ages 3 to 5 from Head Start centers in San Mateo County, Calif. -- For kids, it tastes better if it's in a McDonald's wrapper (NY Daily News)

That clown is scary.

Of course, if you want to get the kids to eat their liver and Brussels sprouts, save those HappyMeal boxes.