tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355657602008-09-15T13:29:46.825-07:00A blog of research design and statistics in psychology, behavioral economics, and decision making. by Craig Markerstatisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comBlogger268125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-65121694327066038822008-09-15T13:21:00.000-07:002008-09-15T13:29:46.835-07:00

Here is an excerpt of an article in the New Orleans paper Times-Picaune: if (_pdata) { addpdata("ptype", "story"); addpdata("stuid", "1221197489308420"); addpdata("sttitle", "Productive worrying"); addpdata("stcat", "LPLV"); addpdata("stsource", "timespicayune"); addpdata("stdate", "09/12/2008"); addpdata("stpnum", "1"); addpdata("stnpgs", "2"); }

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-70791788168993371862008-08-28T05:30:00.000-07:002008-09-15T13:21:41.676-07:00

A new blog can be found at: http://blogs.nova.edu/marker

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-10335606578564376092008-07-14T06:11:00.000-07:002008-07-14T06:13:19.428-07:00

Here is an excerpt from John Tierney discussing experiments described in Dan Ariely's new book, Predictably Irrational. In a series of experiments, hundreds of students could not bear to let their options vanish . . . . They played a computer game that paid real cash to look for money behind three doors on the screen. . . . After they opened a door by clicking on it, each subsequent click

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-29293462108166958572008-07-14T05:14:00.000-07:002008-07-14T06:16:48.032-07:00

Here is an excerpt from PsyBlog discussing how perception is affected. Our lab is currently doing research on how fear can affect perception. Jessica K. Witt, an assistant professor at Purdue University, found that golfers who play well are more likely to actually see a bigger hole. Witt's research team conducted three experiments. In the first, 46 golfers were asked to estimate the size of the

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-66605098645321912342008-07-09T07:09:00.000-07:002008-07-09T07:12:06.268-07:00

Here is an excerpt from an article describing an interview with Steven Pinker. Of note, is how Pinker paid attention to our deficits in affective forecasting (our ability to predict our future happiness) and forgot to pay attention to cognitive dissonance (how we tend to justify our actions). Pinker cites the example of Dan Gilbert's work on affective forecasting, which has shown just how poor

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-73919743613663733712008-07-07T08:50:00.000-07:002008-07-07T08:51:45.997-07:00

Here is a video blog from Scientific America discussing how meditation affects attentional blink:

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-73151536148298975692008-07-06T10:03:00.001-07:002008-07-06T10:06:41.203-07:00

Here is a portion of an entry written by Scott Adams on how people may have individual differences on the amount of cognitive dissonance that they can handle. Recently I saw the best case of cognitive dissonance I have ever seen. It was on Bill Maher's show, Real Time, which I love. Bill was interviewing Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg, who has a book about global warming, called "Cool It." The

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-19976439590329585032008-07-01T05:21:00.000-07:002008-07-01T05:23:41.003-07:00

Here is an excerpt from Dan Gilbert in Psychologist magazine discussing 'revolutions' in science and social psychology: Psychologists have a penchant for irrational exuberances, and whenever we discover something new we feel the need to discard everything old. Social psychology is the exception. We kept cognition alive during the behaviourist revolution that denied it, we kept emotion alive

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-17312141320301804482008-06-30T12:17:00.000-07:002008-06-30T12:18:02.722-07:00

Linehan (1993) makes the following five fundamental points regarding "radical acceptance": Acceptance is acknowledgment of what is. Acceptance is non-judgmental, not a matter of deeming something good or okay.Freedom from suffering requires accepting rather than resisting reality.Choosing to tolerate pain or distress in the moment is acceptance.Accepting rather than avoiding painful emotions

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-31298300144866376732008-06-17T08:41:00.000-07:002008-06-17T08:42:23.161-07:00

Here is more (part 1) related to Jon Haidt's book on the analogy of the rider (cognition) and the horse (emotion): The point of these studies is that moral judgment is like aesthetic judgment. When you see a painting, you usually know instantly and automatically whether you like it. If someone asks you to explain your judgment, you confabulate. You don’t really know why you think something is

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-28259917725115518322008-06-17T08:35:00.000-07:002008-06-17T08:46:02.137-07:00

Below is an analogy Jon Haidt uses in his book The Happiness Hypothesis to describe the relationship between our higher order cognition (the rider in his analogy) and emotion (the horse). He goes on to discuss how we feel that we are in control of the horse (or our emotions), but the horse does many things automatically that we have very little control over (nor would could our cognitions be

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-21382955998319844842008-06-17T07:07:00.000-07:002008-06-17T07:13:58.238-07:00

Here is an excerpt describing a case study of a boy who thought that missing his ritual caused the 9/11 attacks. These ideas of thoughts causing catastrophic results is commonly known as thought action fusion. Researchers in London have documented the case of a ten-year-old boy with obsessive compulsive symptoms, who believed the terror attacks of 9/11 occurred because he had failed to complete

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-25500840561651499242008-06-17T05:57:00.000-07:002008-06-17T05:59:54.807-07:00

Here is an excerpt from the Mind Hacks blog discussing a recent article about differences in showing off wealth: The Atlantic magazine has an interesting article on how conspicuous consumption - the practice of showing off luxury goods - differs across social groups and seems to be more common when your peers are low earners. The piece discusses work led by economist Kerwin Charles who was

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-54680648938000065552008-06-12T05:39:00.000-07:002008-06-12T05:42:51.212-07:00

Here is an excerpt from the Don't Delay Blog: Three British psychologists ...collected data from 179 students, measuring their procrastination (behavioral and decisional), worry, anxiety, depression and metacognition. ... "Metacognition refers to the beliefs, psychological structures, events and processes that are implicated in the control, modification, and interpretation of thinking itself" (p.

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-68711474294582623542008-06-12T05:34:00.000-07:002008-06-12T05:35:54.296-07:00

Here is an excerpt from the 'As you like it' Blog. It describes a poor survey done on AOL. If Comedy Central were doing a skit on survey design, this would be it. If a slot machine were as rigged as this survey, the gaming commission would shut down the casino. If a college student designed a survey that was this lame, the school would be justified in having the kid flogged in the campus center

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-79038371881901775472008-06-09T07:36:00.000-07:002008-06-09T07:40:39.428-07:00

Here is an excerpt discussing how a physician's expectancy can change how much the patient experiences the placebo effect: ... it is possible to show that doctors are as important in producing the meaning response as patients. Gracely et al (1985) looked at the effect of placebo on pain in patients having their wisdom teeth extracted. The study was set up as a standard double-blind (neither the

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-84356215628356132632008-06-09T07:30:00.000-07:002008-06-09T07:31:57.215-07:00

Here is an excerpt of a blog discussing a recent article published in Science: Another recent article by Elizabeth W. Dunn, Lara B. Aknin, and Michael I. Norton, published in 2008 in Science, concluded that money can buy happiness, so long as the money is spent on someone else. They described three studies. The first was a survey of Americans and found that the am0ount of money people spent in

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-30009845280129664312008-06-05T09:41:00.000-07:002008-06-05T09:43:33.479-07:00

Here are 3 tips on maximizing happiness from Psyblog:1. Visualising your best possible selfVisualising your best possible self may sound like an exercise in fantasy but, crucially, it does have to be realistic. Carrying out this exercise typically involves imagining your life in the future, but a future where everything that could go well, has gone well. You have reached those realistic goals

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-20256464415682639382008-06-02T07:51:00.000-07:002008-06-02T07:53:53.610-07:00

Here is an excerpt from the Situationist on the social psychology of Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez: ...Yankee third-baseman Alex Rodriguez, better known as A-Rod. He muscled 54 home runs during the regular season, a particularly impressive feat given that he plays in Yankee Stadium, which, with its deep left field, has historically been inhospitable to right-handed power hitters. Although the

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-16916647401129192132008-05-29T04:48:00.000-07:002008-05-29T04:50:02.475-07:00

Here is an excerpt from the BPS blog describing research on our ability to predict the future. Also of interest is Dan Gilbert and Tim Wilson's work on this same topic. Nick Sevdalis and Nigel Harvey gave 47 participants £10 each to split as they chose with an unseen stranger in another room. If the stranger rejected the amount they were offered as too mean, then both the participant and

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-75302757254598002612008-05-28T04:02:00.000-07:002008-05-28T04:05:18.033-07:00

Here is an excerpt from the Addiction in Society Blog: Hillary Clinton, in presenting her argument for why her campaign should continue in the face of overwhelming statistical odds, noted that Robert Kennedy was assassinated at a point later in the 1968 presidential campaign than the current date. ... Why would she draw such an ugly analogy? To understand how such a smart, savvy, and

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-21879127008005846602008-05-28T03:30:00.000-07:002008-05-28T06:00:22.986-07:00

There is a great article by Robert Leahy that appeared in the International Journal of Cognitive Therapy. In this article, he and his colleague, Dennis Tirch, discuss feelings of jealousy and how to deal with them. Below is an excerpt from Robert Leahy's blog on some of the strategies. Jealousy is angry agitated worry. When we are jealous we worry that our partner might find someone else more

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-14471207477519168822008-05-28T03:22:00.000-07:002008-05-28T05:24:09.389-07:00

An excerpt from the Freakonomics Blog: What do American drivers, the children of Lake Wobegon, and termites have in common? They are all above average. Here’s what a regular reader called LLP pointed out in an e-mail: There is a TV ad running here in Southern California for a pest control company. It states that “the average termite eats 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” so your million dollar

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-28274114361577355142008-05-28T03:16:00.000-07:002008-05-28T05:59:20.591-07:00

Here is an excerpt from slate.com providing a doctor's account of why too many antibiotics are given out. It brings up an interesting question to psychotherapy. That is, should we kick out patients who we don't feel need treatment? If we keep them in treatment, are we reinforcing the idea that they are sick and need help? While working a busy night shift in the ER recently, I evaluated a 13-

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35565760.post-32183675483121192482008-05-21T07:49:00.000-07:002008-05-21T07:57:52.474-07:00

Here is an excerpt from the BPS blog on interviewing children and how the interviewer's behaviors can profoundly impact the child's answers: Eighty-six children, aged 8 to 10, took part in a ten minute lesson on how the vocal chords work, before being interviewed about the session a week later. Some of the children were interviewed by a woman who smiled and did not fidget. The others were

statisticshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880344579270825293noreply@blogger.com