RE: [tips] Stats on airplane terrorism
All true, and I don't dispute the statistics. But there's a good reason to be (much) more concerned about terrorist attacks than lightning: lightning doesn't learn from experience. Were terrorists able to find a dependable way of bringing explosive devices on board planes with low risk of detection, all it would take is one or at most two downed commercial planes to paralyze (temporarily, one would hope) the airplane industry, national and international travel, and much of the world economy. Again, I don't dispute that the absolute risks are at present extremely low. I just wouldn't want us to leap to the unjustified conclusion that the amount of worry we should devote to such incidents should be much less than to lightning strikes, as the issues involved here are markedly different. Scott From: Paul Brandon [paul.bran...@mnsu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 1:19 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Stats on airplane terrorism Not to mention the risks of being killed by an infected cheeseburger. We cheerfully tolerate many higher but less dramatic risks than 'terrorism'. On Dec 29, 2009, at 12:03 AM, Christopher D. Green wrote: Here are some statistics on the probability of being the (attempted) victim of terrorism on a commercial flight that may make for interesting discussion in your courses: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/odds-of-airborne-terror.html Here's the best bit: the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning. Paul Brandon Emeritus Professor of Psychology Minnesota State University, Mankato paul.bran...@mnsu.edumailto:paul.bran...@mnsu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) This e-mail message (including any attachments) is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this message (including any attachments) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please contact the sender by reply e-mail message and destroy all copies of the original message (including attachments). --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Stats on airplane terrorism
I would like to add to Scott's point that terrorism involving commercial flights is a low probability but high impact event by pointing out that a better measure of the effect of terrorism is how many people have died from all identified instances of terrorism. As Nate Silver (see his picture in the dictionary under nerd) points out, there has only been six incidents with commercial airlines. If this were the only empirical indicator of the effects of terrorism, then one might feel safe to ignore terrorism but that would be a foolish thing to do. Nate Silver is just doing number crunching because certain numbers are available to crunch. He doesn't go deeper and ask why is that number so low given the great impact that terrorism involving commercial airlnes has on society. The number is not small because it is a naturally low number but because huge resources have been used to keep that number low. The real question is what are the best practices to keep the number of terrorists events low while putting the least amount of restrictions on what people can do when flying. Other better questions for Nate to ask is what would be the naturally occurring rate of terrorism involving commercial airliners be if there were no processes in place to prevent it? Or how long would it take for commercial airlines to be reduced to only a few flights a day because the probability of being involved in a terrorist event would cause people to use other means of transportation? But this requires more than number crunching, it requires understanding the role of terrorism, how to use it effectively against a population, and how people respond to terrorist threats. I don't think Nate thinks at that level. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:30:41 -0800, Scott O Lilienfeld wrote: All true, and I don't dispute the statistics. But there's a good reason to be (much) more concerned about terrorist attacks than lightning: lightning doesn't learn from experience. Were terrorists able to find a dependable way of bringing explosive devices on board planes with low risk of detection, all it would take is one or at most two downed commercial planes to paralyze (temporarily, one would hope) the airplane industry, national and international travel, and much of the world economy. Again, I don't dispute that the absolute risks are at present extremely low. I just wouldn't want us to leap to the unjustified conclusion that the amount of worry we should devote to such incidents should be much less than to lightning strikes, as the issues involved here are markedly different. Scott From: Paul Brandon [paul.bran...@mnsu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 1:19 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Stats on airplane terrorism Not to mention the risks of being killed by an infected cheeseburger. We cheerfully tolerate many higher but less dramatic risks than 'terrorism'. On Dec 29, 2009, at 12:03 AM, Christopher D. Green wrote: Here are some statistics on the probability of being the (attempted) victim of terrorism on a commercial flight that may make for interesting discussion in your courses: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/odds-of-airborne-terror.html Here's the best bit: the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Stats on airplane terrorism
One must consider marginal utility and limited resources. How many lives would be saved by committing a billion dollars to: 1. Combatting terrorism. 2. Reducing automobile accidents. 3. Making the food supply safe. Two and three also have social and economic costs. And then there are the wars and resources committed to medical advertising and the production of 'me-too' drugs rather than research. On Dec 29, 2009, at 5:29 AM, Lilienfeld, Scott O wrote: All true, and I don't dispute the statistics. But there's a good reason to be (much) more concerned about terrorist attacks than lightning: lightning doesn't learn from experience. Were terrorists able to find a dependable way of bringing explosive devices on board planes with low risk of detection, all it would take is one or at most two downed commercial planes to paralyze (temporarily, one would hope) the airplane industry, national and international travel, and much of the world economy. Again, I don't dispute that the absolute risks are at present extremely low. I just wouldn't want us to leap to the unjustified conclusion that the amount of worry we should devote to such incidents should be much less than to lightning strikes, as the issues involved here are markedly different. Scott From: Paul Brandon [paul.bran...@mnsu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 1:19 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Stats on airplane terrorism Not to mention the risks of being killed by an infected cheeseburger. We cheerfully tolerate many higher but less dramatic risks than 'terrorism'. On Dec 29, 2009, at 12:03 AM, Christopher D. Green wrote: Here are some statistics on the probability of being the (attempted) victim of terrorism on a commercial flight that may make for interesting discussion in your courses: http:// www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/odds-of-airborne-terror.html Here's the best bit: the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning. Paul Brandon 10 Crown Hill Lane Mankato, MN 56001 pkbra...@hickorytech.net Paul Brandon Emeritus Professor of Psychology Minnesota State University, Mankato paul.bran...@mnsu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Stats on airplane terrorism
In Gardner's book The Science of Fear (http://www.amazon.com/Science-Fear-Culture-Manipulates-Brain/dp/0452295467/ref=pd_sim_b_1) he has an excellent chapter on terrorism and the effects of fear and overreaction to terrorism. He also cites a worldwide data base on the total number of people killed in terrorist attacks which is usually 300-500 annually worldwide (I do not have the book here so I cannot double check it; I'm also sure there is lots of difficulty with what counts as a terrorist attack). Marie Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Department Chair and Associate Professor of Psychology Kaufman 168, Dickinson College Carlisle, PA 17013, office (717) 245-1562, fax (717) 245-1971 Office hours: Mon/Thur 3-4, Tues 10:30-11:30 http://users.dickinson.edu/~helwegm/index.html -Original Message- From: Mike Palij [mailto:m...@nyu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 4:55 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Cc: Mike Palij Subject: RE: [tips] Stats on airplane terrorism I would like to add to Scott's point that terrorism involving commercial flights is a low probability but high impact event by pointing out that a better measure of the effect of terrorism is how many people have died from all identified instances of terrorism. As Nate Silver (see his picture in the dictionary under nerd) points out, there has only been six incidents with commercial airlines. If this were the only empirical indicator of the effects of terrorism, then one might feel safe to ignore terrorism but that would be a foolish thing to do. Nate Silver is just doing number crunching because certain numbers are available to crunch. He doesn't go deeper and ask why is that number so low given the great impact that terrorism involving commercial airlnes has on society. The number is not small because it is a naturally low number but because huge resources have been used to keep that number low. The real question is what are the best practices to keep the number of terrorists events low while putting the least amount of restrictions on what people can do when flying. Other better questions for Nate to ask is what would be the naturally occurring rate of terrorism involving commercial airliners be if there were no processes in place to prevent it? Or how long would it take for commercial airlines to be reduced to only a few flights a day because the probability of being involved in a terrorist event would cause people to use other means of transportation? But this requires more than number crunching, it requires understanding the role of terrorism, how to use it effectively against a population, and how people respond to terrorist threats. I don't think Nate thinks at that level. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:30:41 -0800, Scott O Lilienfeld wrote: All true, and I don't dispute the statistics. But there's a good reason to be (much) more concerned about terrorist attacks than lightning: lightning doesn't learn from experience. Were terrorists able to find a dependable way of bringing explosive devices on board planes with low risk of detection, all it would take is one or at most two downed commercial planes to paralyze (temporarily, one would hope) the airplane industry, national and international travel, and much of the world economy. Again, I don't dispute that the absolute risks are at present extremely low. I just wouldn't want us to leap to the unjustified conclusion that the amount of worry we should devote to such incidents should be much less than to lightning strikes, as the issues involved here are markedly different. Scott From: Paul Brandon [paul.bran...@mnsu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 1:19 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Stats on airplane terrorism Not to mention the risks of being killed by an infected cheeseburger. We cheerfully tolerate many higher but less dramatic risks than 'terrorism'. On Dec 29, 2009, at 12:03 AM, Christopher D. Green wrote: Here are some statistics on the probability of being the (attempted) victim of terrorism on a commercial flight that may make for interesting discussion in your courses: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/odds-of-airborne-terror.html Here's the best bit: the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly
[tips] social psychology trade books; need recommendations for project
I'm always on the lookout for recent (or even not-so-recent trade books that I may have missed) for a project in which students read trade books written by social psychologists (or sometimes non social psychologists on social psychological topics) and develop useful applications based on the book for a class project. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. For reference, here is the list that I used last year: 1) Self insight (Dunning) 2) The mismeasure of women (Tavris) 3) The how of happiness (Lyubomirsky) 4) How we know what isn’t so (Gilovich) 5) Mindfulness (Langer) 6) Intuition (Myers) 7) Curse of the Self (Leary) 8) White bears (Wegner) 9) Strangers to ourselves (Wilson) 10) Making marriage work (Gottman) 11) The relationship cure (Gottman) 12) Opening up (Pennebaker) 13) Singled out (DePaulo) 14) Emotions revealed (Ekman) 15) Telling lies (Ekman) 16) Breaking Murphy’s Law (Segerstrom) 17) Survival of the prettiest (Etcoff) 18) Stumbling on Happiness (Gilbert) 19) American Paradox (Myers) 20) Meanings of Life (Baumeister) 21) The two sexes (Maccoby) 22) Why so slow? (Valian) 23) Everyday mind reading (Ickes) 24) Losing control (Baumeister) 25) Friendly letter to skeptics (Myers) 26) Mistakes were made (Tavris) 27) The cultural animal (Baumeister) Thanks!! -- Traci A. Giuliano Professor of Psychology John H. Duncan Chair Southwestern University Georgetown, TX 78626 office 512.863.1596 fax 512.863.1846 --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] social psychology trade books; need recommendations for project
On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:16:03 -0800, Traci Giuliano wrote: I'm always on the lookout for recent (or even not-so-recent trade books that I may have missed) for a project in which students read trade books written by social psychologists (or sometimes non social psychologists on social psychological topics) and develop useful applications based on the book for a class project. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. How about: Phil Zimbardo: The Lucifer Effect (the Stanford Prison Experiment and Beyond) Charles Skoller: Twisted Confessions (Skoller was the NYC ADA who investigated the Kitty Genovese murder and prosecuted Winston Mosley who killed Kitty and other women; it's useful to compare Skoller's account with other accounts as Harold Takooshian did in his review of this book in PscyCritiques) Gerd Gigerenze: Gut Feelings (Gerd's attempt to cash in on the Blink popularity which relied in part on his research which he goes into more detail in this book) Gary Belsky Tom Gilovich: Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How To Correct Them (part behavioral economics, part decision-making and heuristics, part self-help) All of the above are available on Amazon. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu For reference, here is the list that I used last year: 1) Self insight (Dunning) 2) The mismeasure of women (Tavris) 3) The how of happiness (Lyubomirsky) 4) How we know what isn’t so (Gilovich) 5) Mindfulness (Langer) 6) Intuition (Myers) 7) Curse of the Self (Leary) 8) White bears (Wegner) 9) Strangers to ourselves (Wilson) 10) Making marriage work (Gottman) 11) The relationship cure (Gottman) 12) Opening up (Pennebaker) 13) Singled out (DePaulo) 14) Emotions revealed (Ekman) 15) Telling lies (Ekman) 16) Breaking Murphy’s Law (Segerstrom) 17) Survival of the prettiest (Etcoff) 18) Stumbling on Happiness (Gilbert) 19) American Paradox (Myers) 20) Meanings of Life (Baumeister) 21) The two sexes (Maccoby) 22) Why so slow? (Valian) 23) Everyday mind reading (Ickes) 24) Losing control (Baumeister) 25) Friendly letter to skeptics (Myers) 26) Mistakes were made (Tavris) 27) The cultural animal (Baumeister) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] social psychology trade books; need recommendations for project
In a 2007 article for *Teaching of Psychology *on Teaching Psychological Science through Writing I offered a few of my favorite trade books, as of 2006. (Excuse any typos from the OCR scanning of the pdf article, which I'd be glad to send anyone.) Dave Myers www.davidmyers.org www.hearingloop.org Trade Books Sometimes we have an urge to say more than magazine articles will allow. That has been the experience of our colleagues who have written successful and influential general audience trade books. Like many readers of this journal, I have relished and felt pride in books by psychological scientists such as Robert Cialdini, Thomas Gilovich, Judith Rich Harris, Irving Janis, Elizabeth Loftus, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, James Pennebaker, Steven Pinker, Daniel Schacter, Martin Seligman, Carol Tavris, Daniel Wegner, Timothy Wilson, and Phillip Zimbardo. Now our field has been blessed with four successful new trade books, each of which is giving psychology away to large audiences. Schwartz's (2004) *The Paradox of Choice, *which has been massively covered in various media, applies psy~ chological science in explaining why today's world ironically offers us more choice and less satisfaction. Twenge's (2006) *Generation *Me masterfully draws on research and popular culture in depicting the rise of epidemic narcissism, illusory optimism, and anxiety among today's younger Americans. In *The Happiness* *Hypothesis, *Haidt (2006) pointed to a more meaningful, moral, and happy life by interweaving ancient wisdom and modem science. Gilbert’s (2006) *Stumbling* on *Happiness *gives readers a rollicking tour of the new research on people's inability to predict their own happiness. In addition also to Seligman's (2002) *Authentic* *Happiness *and Lykken's (1999) *Happiness, *there arc two more happiness books to come. Emmons (2007) authored *Thanks! How the New *Science *of Gratitude* *Can Make You Happier. *Diener and Biswas-Diener (in press) wrote *Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of * *Psychological Wealth, *the title of their forthcoming report of well-being research. Lest anyone think that positive psychology has com- pletely taken over the discipline, the happiness trade books are balanced by psychologist-authored evil trade books. Waller's (2002) powerful *Becoming *Evil. will soon appear in a second edition. Shermer (2004) offered *The Science af Good *and Evil, Baumeister (1997) contributed *Evil: Inside Human Cruelty *and *Violence,* Zimbardo (2007) has authored *The Lucifer Effect: *Un~ *derstanding How *Good *People *Turn Evil, and Tavris and Aronson (2007) coauthored Mistakes *Were Made (But* *Not by *Me). --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Cannabis damages young brains
���I think I blundered in my statistical calculation in my last posting on this thread. I wrote: Here are the statistics: http://tinyurl.com/yjeq7hm The risk was most increased for breast cancer. In developed countries like the UK, the chance of having had breast cancer by the age of 75 is 9.5 in 100. According to the study, for every extra daily unit of alcohol (over 2 a week), that risk increases by 1.1 per 100. So if you had a roughly 9.5 percent chance of getting breast cancer by the age of 75, but you drank one glass of wine a day, that risk would go up to 10.6 percent. If you drank two glasses of wine a day, that would increase to 11.7 percent. My calculation gives: Chance of getting breast cancer up to age 75 is approximately 1 in 10 Moderate drinking gives 1% increase, i.e., 1% of 10% = 0.1% increase = 1 in 1000 I should have argued that (using the figures from the study) that 9.5 women in every 100 get breast cancer by the age of 75. According to the study, for moderate drinkers this goes up to 10.6 women in every 100. That makes an increase of 1.1 women in every 100, i.e., an increase of roughly 1 in 100. This tallies with the conclusion at the end of the Abstract to the study: Low to moderate alcohol consumption in women increases the risk of certain cancers. For every additional drink regularly consumed per day, the increase in incidence up to age 75 years per 1000 for women in developed countries is estimated to be about 11 for breast cancer… http://tinyurl.com/yc6esev Chris Green wrote: when in fact the actual increase in the breast cancer rate was something like 2 in 10,000 By my reckoning that means Chris is out by a factor of 50. A reminder: The issue here is not the absolute validity of the study, but Chris's assertion: Without actually going back a checking press releases, I can recall the case of the moderate drinking causes breast cancer announcement in Britain earlier this year, in which it seemed pretty clear that the scientists had sexed it up for the university press team, who had then re-sexed it up for the new media, who had then re-re-sexed it up for public (when in fact the actual increase in the breast cancer rate was something like 2 in 10,000… As I wrote in my last posting, from the Abstract of the published study, the press release on a BMJ website (reprinted in the Guardian), and British newspaper reports of the study I can find nothing to support any of the above contentions. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org Re: [tips] Cannabis damages young brains Allen Esterson Tue, 29 Dec 2009 06:55:13 -0800 On 28 Dec 2009 Chris Green wrote: There's nothing surprisingly egregious about this particular article, is there? In response to which Stephen Black replied: I've never seen a university press release, which should have been vetted by the authors and presumably ran with their approval, hide the fact that the research was in animals. Chris Green responded: I'm still surprised. Without actually going back a checking press releases, I can recall the case of the moderate drinking causes breast cancer announcement in Britain earlier this year, in which it seemed pretty clear that the scientists had sexed it up for the university press team, who had then re-sexed it up for the new media, who had then re-re-sexed it up for public (when in fact the actual increase in the breast cancer rate was something like 2 in 10,000, and there was little reason to believe that alcohol, rather than the billion or so things correlated with increased alcohol consumption, was responsible even for this tiny increase). Let's all agree that there is much dismal reporting of scientific findings (especially in the field of health) in the media. But Chris's response to Stephen does not directly answer his challenge. Moreover his supposedly just as bad example turns out, on investigation, not to live up to Chris's assertions (at least as far as the British press is concerned). I though it might be interesting to investigate the specific example Chris gives concerning the study which was reported as saying that moderate drinking increases the risk of (not causes) breast cancer. My conclusion, at least in relation to the British press, is that the reporting was nowhere near as bad as Chris asserts, and that he understates the claimed increase of breast cancer rate for moderate drinking by a factor of about 5. First the study by the University of Oxford's Cancer Epidemiology Unit: Moderate Alcohol Intake and Cancer Incidence in Women, Allen N. E. et al, : Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Volume 101, Number 5, 4 March 2009 , pp. 296-305(10). From the Abstract's Conclusion (relating to alcohol): Low to moderate alcohol consumption in women increases the risk of certain cancers. For every additional drink regularly consumed per day, the increase
[tips] Brain-Mind Science in Fiction: Calling all nerds!
Hello TIPsters: I am in the happy position of getting to offer an elective seminar this spring, which I have dubbed Prime Time Cognitive-Neuroscience. The idea is to use television programming that incorporates brain-mind-behavior science ideas into the storylines, in order to help our students (these will be mostly seniors) integrate and reinforce many of the things they've learned over the last three years. We use these programs as a lens thru which we try to get an idea of what public perceptions of the current state of our knowledge is and where the public thinks we might be headed, and then do our best to see how reasonable these are, given what we know right now. There are lots of obvious examples, many very recent but some older: 1. Battlestar Galactica (artificial intelligence, etc) 2. Dollhouse (mind control, memory alteration) 3. House (you name it, they've done it) 4. Six Million Dollar Man (advanced prosthetics) So: here is my request-- I'm trying to organize the semester not by shows per se, but by major themes. I wonder if you could take a look at my draft themes list, and critique it, or add some of your own. Note that I am going for MAJOR themes--the ones that come up over and over again. 1. Advanced Neural Prosthetics (ala Georgie LaForge in Star Trek TNG and the $6M Man) 2. Amnesia/Memory Loss (due to accidental or intentional causes, or disease) 3. Cognitive Enhancement (smart pills implanted memory devices computer chips in the brain etc) 4. Mind Control (e.g. the recent episode of Fringe where the kid took all the pills and gained this power, but think also Jose Delgado and the bull with the implanted stimulator) 5. Mind Reading (could be really far-fetched a la The Cell but also might include detection of deception as in Lie to Me) 6. Artificial Intelligence/Robotics (computers take over a la BSG and Terminator but also Commander Data in TNG) 7. Virtual Worlds (artificially generated hallucinations, sort of goes with Mind Control, but really refers to implanting thoughts and sensory experiences, usually more for entertainment purposes) 8. Emotional Hostages (technological/pharmaceutical control of emotions for benign or malign purposes) 9. Medical Mysteries (sort of a catch-all category of which House is perhaps the most prominent recent example, but includes lots of the hospital-dramas like ER and Grey's Anatomy) 10. My Tumor Made Me Do It (Law Order-type shows, where someone's organic disease/damage causes them to commit a crime of some kind) 11. Chemical Mind (aka Altered states. Think the famous Blue Boy episode from Dragnet) That set of themes seems to cover a lot of ground, but I wonder if you can think of any big ones that aren't one this list? Also, if you have any specific episodes that are really good then I'd appreciate your suggestions there as well. Old, new, great, awful, drama, comedy, live action, animated series, American, foreign--doesn't matter. Just so long as they serve as a good focal point for our discussions, and fit well within one of the major themes. Note that this is really more Fiction based on science than it is Science Fiction although obviously a lot of sci-fi will work very well. Thanks in advance Mike Donnelly UW-Stout Dept of Psychology -- P.S.: TV only. We did At the Movies last year, and this is a partial list -Johnny Mnemonic (cognitive enhancement, plus perhaps the best example of overacting by a major star ever put to the big screen. What do I want? I want room service!!! and a club sandwich!!) -Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein (together they make about 150 min; features a brain transplant, and something surprisingly like genetic experimentation. Surprisingly cool, plus you get to see just how well Mel Brooks did in putting together Young Frankenstein) -Possible Worlds (brains in a vat...literally) -Diving Bell the Butterfly -Robocop (neural control of robots) -Existenz (virtual worlds for the purpose of entertainment) -Clean Slate (like Memento, but played for laughs) -Eternal Sunshine Spotless Mind (memory alteration, of course) -Fiend without a Face (the final 40 minutes, just for fun on day 1 of the course) So you have an idea of the range of the things we like... --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] social psychology trade books; need recommendations for project
How about The Myth of Repressed Memory by Loftus Michael Britt mich...@thepsychfiles.com www.thepsychfiles.com Twitter: mbritt On Dec 29, 2009, at 2:15 PM, Traci Giuliano wrote: I'm always on the lookout for recent (or even not-so-recent trade books that I may have missed) for a project in which students read trade books written by social psychologists (or sometimes non social psychologists on social psychological topics) and develop useful applications based on the book for a class project. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. For reference, here is the list that I used last year: 1) Self insight (Dunning) 2) The mismeasure of women (Tavris) 3) The how of happiness (Lyubomirsky) 4) How we know what isn’t so (Gilovich) 5) Mindfulness (Langer) 6) Intuition (Myers) 7) Curse of the Self (Leary) 8) White bears (Wegner) 9) Strangers to ourselves (Wilson) 10) Making marriage work (Gottman) 11) The relationship cure (Gottman) 12) Opening up (Pennebaker) 13) Singled out (DePaulo) 14) Emotions revealed (Ekman) 15) Telling lies (Ekman) 16) Breaking Murphy’s Law (Segerstrom) 17) Survival of the prettiest (Etcoff) 18) Stumbling on Happiness (Gilbert) 19) American Paradox (Myers) 20) Meanings of Life (Baumeister) 21) The two sexes (Maccoby) 22) Why so slow? (Valian) 23) Everyday mind reading (Ickes) 24) Losing control (Baumeister) 25) Friendly letter to skeptics (Myers) 26) Mistakes were made (Tavris) 27) The cultural animal (Baumeister) Thanks!! -- Traci A. Giuliano Professor of Psychology John H. Duncan Chair Southwestern University Georgetown, TX 78626 office 512.863.1596 fax 512.863.1846 --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] The Token Economy comes to the iPhone
Having a problem raising your kids? iPhone to the rescue! Actually, it might be interesting to ask students if they can name what behavioral technique is at work here: http://bit.ly/tokenecon Michael Britt mich...@thepsychfiles.com www.thepsychfiles.com Twitter: mbritt --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Cannabis damages young brains
Regarding the alcohol-breast cancer finding: this is what I actually wrote back on 25 Feb: For instance, the [BBC] article [sensationally entitled Drink a day increases cancer risk] says that 5,000 of the 45,000 annual cases of breast cancer are due to alcohol -- an increase of 11% they say. The population of the UK is about 60 million. Half of the those are female -- 30 million. About 20% of those are children -- leaving 24 million. (see http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=6). 45,000 out of 24 million = .0019: 19 in ten thousand women are diagnosed with breast cancer in any given year. Even if the alcohol-cancer causal link were, in fact true, the number of cancer cases would drop to 40,000 which, against a vulnerable population of 24 million is .0017: 17 in ten thousand. Now ask yourself the question: Would you change you lifestyle dramatically to reduce a risk by 2 in 10,000? And that's if the causal link had been established, which it hasn't been. Regards, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Cannabis damages young brains
I think I would be better advised to keep clear of this particular dust-up (on breast cancer risk and alcohol intake) even if it was my post (on cannabis!) which seems to have ignited it. Yet I'm intrigued by the discrepancy in the statistics quoted by Chris and Allen. So while Allen sleeps, which is presumably what they do in England at this time of night... Chris says: Would you change your lifestyle dramatically to reduce a risk by 2 in 10,000. Allen instead calculates a reduction in risk of 1 in 100. I think I see the problem. Chris is using annual statistics, i.e. cases in a single year. Allen is using lifetime statistics, up to age 75. I think the decision to change one's lifestyle is best made on the basis of lifetime risk, hence Allen's statistics apply. In my opinion, a reduction in the lifetime risk of breast cancer of 1 in 100 is not trivial, although its personal significance would depend on how dearly you love alcohol. Of course, as has been noted, it would also require that the relationship between breast cancer and drinking be causal, which has not been shown. But I'm also intrigued by the note Chris reminded us he posted on February 25th, the one where he deplores the sensationalism of a BBC article on breast cancer risk and alcohol intake. Recently, he laid into me for my own complaint against a press release (the teenage brain and cannabis one), his point being that as it's all BS anyway, why bother mentioning it. I did find this dismissive and perhaps even a teensy bit condescending. So I'm pleased to discover that he doesn't always think that identifying BS in science is not worth doing. Me, I think it's always worth doing. Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Science unloads on Santa
This list having been rather somber recently, I hesitated to post this. Now that we've resumed business as usual, I'l slip in it just past the mark for such silly seasonal stuff. Not that this kind of thing hasn't been done before, but the sources are of interest: Faculty of Science, University of Gothenberg, Sweden, and BMJ (the British Medical Journal). It has statistics too! First this: http://www.science.gu.se/english/News/Santa/ Then this: http://tinyurl.com/ylgwbts I would send you to the original BMJ article for that last one but they unfortunately want $$$, and at Christmas too. It seems a number of news outlets first picked the story up without realizing it was a spoof. Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] To all Commonwealth Tipsters
Happy 60th.anniversary. We salute our women commonwealthers in expedition in the South pole.You go girls. Michael omnicentric Sylvester,PhD Daytona Beach,Florida --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
