Women in Red Dresses, Hot Cars, Apples and Crack

Are among the things discussed in the video by Jordan Peterson:



Peterson, a University of Toronto professor and clinical psychologist has been much in the internet lately, most particularly after his absolutely stunning interview with Cathy Newman, a British newsreader who epitomized the single mindedness of the liberal media. I like the way he thinks, and I think I think along the same lines. He's a much better speaker though.

In this video he discusses human vision, an interest of mine right now.

Oh yes, women in red dresses, red hot cars, and ripe apples all stimulate the same centers in the brain as cocaine.

And speaking of women in red dresses, did you watch the final of Figure Skating?

Gold medal - Alina Zagitova

Silver medal - Evgenia Medvedeva 

Bronze medal - Kaetlyn Osmond

Evgenia lost to Alina by less than 2 points out of 238 or so. Could she have made up the difference with a brighter red outfit? Should the Canadian Kaetlyn have worn red?

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Larger Than Life" up and running on time and within budget at The Other McCain.

Just Like Riding a Bike . . .

. . . only different.

Don't Feed the Trolls

Psychology Today: Internet Trolls Are Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Sadists

In this month’s issue of Personality and Individual Differences, a study was published that confirms what we all suspected: internet trolls are horrible people. Let’s start by getting our definitions straight. An internet troll is someone who comes into a discussion and posts comments designed to upset or disrupt the conversation. Often, it seems like there is no real purpose behind their comments except to upset everyone else involved. Trolls will lie, exaggerate, and offend to get a response.

What kind of person would do this?

Me, for one. But only rarely.

Canadian researchers decided to find out. They conducted two internet studies with over 1,200 people. They gave personality tests to each subject along with a survey about their internet commenting behavior. They were looking for evidence that linked trolling with the Dark Tetrad of personality: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadistic personality.

They found that Dark Tetrad scores were highest among people who said trolling was their favorite internet activity. To get an idea of how much more prevalent these traits were among internet trolls, check out this figure from the paper:

The lesson is read if you like, comment a bit, debate issues if you feel strongly, but don't troll lest you reveal to others the depth of your inner damage.

Ladies Night

Which just goes to prove how far a little chutzpah can take you. Wombat-socho is celebrating Rule Five Sunday on Monday this week.

I Was Going to Post This Last Night. . .

. . . But then we started catching up on TV programs we'd missed.

Why we can't stop procrastinating, according to science

Calgary professor Piers Steel showed that the percentage of chronic procrastinators has grown from about 5 percent in 1978 to 26 percent in 2007. (Other researchers have put more recent numbers at around 20 percent, but it’s clear the problem is on the rise.)
So what's going on?

Part of the reason may have to do with technology, Steel hypothesized. There’s so much to do online, and so many different media at our fingertips, that putting off until tomorrow (and the day after) what we could do today is almost natural. He estimated that new technologies like email and mobile phones cost the U.S. about $70 billion in lost productivity a year.

Indeed, The Telegraph reported that a survey by Webtrate showed that 60 percent of respondents who looked at email or a social media ping in the middle of work forgot what they were thinking about. Email and social media took away an hour of productivity for about 36 percent of survey takers, and 16 percent lost more than an hour.

But there may be more to it than that. A new study on twins published in Psychological Science has found there may be a genetic link; the siblings in the study tended to have similar self-reported levels of procrastination. Meanwhile, another study in Current Psychology argues that those who are more likely to leave things up to chance have a propensity to wait until the last minute (or even later).

Sad, If True

Some people just don't get music

Some people lack the ability to get pleasure from music, researchers say, even though they enjoy food, sex and other great joys in life.

Psychologists at the University of Barcelona stumbled upon this while they were screening participants for a study by using responses to music to gauge emotion. They were surprised to find that music wasn't important at all to about 5 percent of the people — they said they didn't bob up and down to tunes they liked, didn't get weepy, didn't get chills. It was like they couldn't feel the music at all.

"The first surprise is that some of the participants had trouble bringing music from home," says Josep Marco-Pallares, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Barcelona and senior author of the study. These people didn't have any music — no MP3s, no CDs. No Spotify or Pandora.

Then the 30 volunteers were asked to listen to tunes judged pleasurable by other college students, ranging from Puccini's "Nessun dorma" to Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge over Troubled Water." The scientists measured participants' heart rate and skin conductance, which are considered physiological measures of emotion.

The people who had said they got no pleasure from music showed no physical response, while the music lovers did. "The other participants reported chills when listening to music," Marco-Pallares told Shots. "With our anhedonic group, they had no chills. They had no real response to music."

It's a bit like being color-blind I guess; you can't even know what your missing.



I have trouble believing it.

Wombat-socho cranked out two weeks worth of Rule 5 links on plain Jane "Rule 5 Monday."

Do School Anti-Bullying Programs Lead to Teen Suicides?

In the past we've explored how some school anti-bullying programs seem act a bullying training programs, actually giving bullies ideas on how to terrorize fellow students.  Now comes evidence that the school programs can also encourage the bullied students to commit suicide to end the abuse:

Anti-bullying videos questioned after two students' suicides

Two students from separate schools committed suicide within days of each other this month -- which is National Bullying Prevention Month -- and both boys apparently had been bullied. Now, parents are asking questions not just about bullying but also about anti-bullying videos, which both schools aired shortly before the incidents.

Brad Lewis' son Jordan, 15, a sophomore at Carterville High School in Illinois, killed himself Oct. 17 by shooting himself in the chest. Jordan left behind an affectionate, apologetic note that, according to Lewis, concluded with the line, “Bullying has caused me to do this. Those of you know who you are.”

Lewis criticized investigators for not pursuing the bullies more aggressively, but also turned some of his questions toward his son's school, which showed an anti-bullying video to students the day before Jordan killed himself.

"All I know is they were discussing the bullying, and showing kids bullying, and at the end of the show they showed pictures of kids that took their lives," Lewis said. "When a child or a person is at the end of their rope, and they don’t think there’s anywhere to go, and they don’t think anyone's doing anything about it, and they see something on video, and they relate."

Lewis added, "You’re dealing with kids. Kids don’t look at the long-term situation -- they look at the short term, they look at the pain they feel now, how can they end that pain.”

As my GrandFather used to say: "The Road to Hell is Paved with the skulls of unbaptized babies good intentions."  It's not enough for educational programs to have good intentions.  Teenagers don't have adult brains yet, and sometimes what seems perfectly innocuous educational material to adults just doesn't translate to them. They often get the message that the thing they're are being warned about is common, and normal.   As the old joke goes, I'm glad I took that sexual harassment training at work; otherwise I would not know how to do it.

Feminists, Enviros Hurt to Find People Resent Nagging

Everyone hates environmentalists and feminists 

Why don’t people behave in more environmentally friendly ways? New research presents one uncomfortable answer: They don’t want to be associated with environmentalists...

...In one, the participants—228 Americans recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk—described both varieties of activists in “overwhelmingly negative” terms. The most frequently mentioned traits describing “typical feminists” included “man-hating” and “unhygienic;” for “typical environmentalists,” they included “tree-hugger” and “hippie.”

Another study, featuring 17 male and 45 female undergraduates, confirmed the pervasiveness of those stereotypes. It further found participants were less interested in befriending activists who participated in stereotypical behavior (such as staging protest rallies), but could easily envision hanging out with those who use “nonabrasive and mainstream methods” such as raising money or organizing social events...

...“Unfortunately,” they write, “the very nature of activism leads to negative stereotyping. By aggressively promoting change and advocating unconventional practices, activists become associated with hostile militancy and unconventionality or eccentricity. 
Furthermore, this tendency to associate activists with negative stereotypes and perceive them as people with whom it would be unpleasant to affiliate reduces individuals’ motivation to adopt the pro-change behaviors that activists advocate.”...

Notice that the "Unfortunately" in the above selection reveals the researchers bias; they really desire for feminists and environmentalists to make the sale.  I thought scientists were supposed to be unbiased.  Oh wait, I am one, and I know that's not true.

She Just Can't Take a Compliment

Why women are terrible at accepting compliments

Renee Engeln, a psychology professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., says it has to do with the mixed messages women receive about what behaviors are desirable or acceptable.

“[We’re told] love yourself, but not too much. Be confident, but practice a style of humility this culture never requires of men. Believe in yourself, but never admit it out loud, lest you make another woman who doesn’t feel good about herself feel bad,” she says. “If you’re raised to think it’s arrogant to ever say something positive about yourself, it makes it hard to accept a compliment.”

As for the self-loathing one-upsmanship, she says that has more to do with trying to convince others we’re better at humility.

“We’re convincing them that we win at the game of crushing our own self-confidence,” she says. “I don’t think that’s a win, though.”

 Also linked at The Other McCain in Wombat-Socho's weekly Rule 5 bonanza "Rule 5 Monday."