Please visit www.psycholounge.com to see the current project:

Personality trait correlates of performance in decision-making and judgement

This research project exploits the Five Factor Personality Model and numerous decision-making and judgement tasks to identify and measure any correlations. To some extent the study is exploratory, so whilst no specific correlations are being anticipated it is hypothesised that correlations will be present. In particular, it is expected that specific personality traits will be associated with performance on certain decision tasks but not on others.

The whole process will take approximately 45 minutes and will be completed in three steps:
Step 1: Login
Step 2: Personality assessment
Step 3: Measurement of performance in decision-making tasks

Your personality assessment results plus a brief explanation of the decision-making tasks will be provided on completion.

 

Pure, raw talent...absolutely captivating 

 

...and the salsa version

 

 

The Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor "Quasi una fantasia", Opus 27, No. 2, by Ludwig van Beethoven, is widely known as "The Moonlight Sonata".

Beethoven wrote this sonata in 1801 and dedicated it to his pupil, the 17-year-old Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, with whom he was in love. In 1832, several years after Beethoven's death, the German poet and music critic Ludwig Rellstab compared the music of the first movement to moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne, giving rise to the work's byname.

The "Moonlight" Sonata is one of Beethoven's most popular works, and it is frequently performed and recorded.

 

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._14_%28Beethoven%29

Why do humans create certain kinds of images and why certain kinds of representations seem to produce heightened pleasure in our consumption of art? Why do human artists seem to have an inexplicable tendency, cross culturally, to create images of the human body that are exaggerated in proportions? Why does art depict forms that aren’t proportioned naturally;  rather, they are exaggerated proportionally? (i.e., real human beings don’t look like that!). 

Well, in comes neurologist V.S. Ramachadran to explain how our brains respond to certain stimuli with pleasure. It seems that our brains respond to certain aspects of our bodies, and they REALLY respond to those same aspects when exaggerated. Spivey illustrates this, with a species of seagull from the west coast of Spain, whose chicks respond to a red stripe on their mother’s bill during feeding. The chicks respond more vigorously if presented with a dummy-head which is just a yellow stick with three red stripes! In other words, it seems that our brains respond to certain aspects of our bodies, and they REALLY respond to those same aspects when exaggerated. And so around the world, human beings produce art that is “more human than human.”

 

References
http://toddshammer.wordpress.com/2006/07/12/how-art-made-the-world-review-a-naturalistic-explanation/
http://www.pbs.org/howartmadetheworld/episodes/human/

Emily Dickinson

Not In Vain

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one lonely person,
Into happiness again,
I shall not live in vain...

The Milgram experiment was a seminal series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.

The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiments to answer this question: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" Or, put another way, why were there so many "Good Germans"?

“Good Germans” is a phrase that originally referred to citizens of Nazi Germany who, after Germany’s defeat in World War II, claimed not to have supported the regime, yet made no claim to have opposed it in any significant way. This was widely noted by Allied occupation troops, who were amazed and appalled by the widespread disavowal of responsibility for Nazi crimes among the German populace. 

The role of the experimenter was played by a stern, impassive biology teacher dressed in a technician's coat, and the victim was played by an Irish-American accountant trained to act for the role. The participant and another individual (supposedly another volunteer, but in reality a confederate of the experimenter) were told by the experimenter that they would be participating in an experiment to test the effects of punishment on learning.

Two slips of paper were then presented to the participant and to the confederate. The participant was led to believe that one of the slips said "learner" and the other said "teacher," and that the participants had been given the slips randomly. In fact, both slips said "teacher," but the actor claimed to have the slip that read "learner," thus guaranteeing that the participant was always the "teacher." At this point, the "teacher" and "learner" were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. In one version of the experiment, the confederate was sure to mention to the participant that he had a heart condition.

The "teacher" was given a 45-volt electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample of the shock that the "learner" would supposedly receive during the experiment. The "teacher" was then given a list of word pairs which he was to teach the learner. The teacher began by reading the list of word pairs to the learner. The teacher would then read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. The learner would press a button to indicate his response. If the answer was incorrect, the learner would receive a shock, with the voltage increasing with each wrong answer. If correct, the teacher would read the next word pair.

The subjects believed that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual shocks. In reality, there were no shocks. After the confederate was separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level. After a number of voltage level increases, the actor started to bang on the wall that separated him from the subject. After several times banging on the wall and complaining about his heart condition, all responses by the learner would cease.

At this point, many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the learner. Some test subjects paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment. Most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress once they heard the screams of pain coming from the learner.

 

 

 

 

If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:

       Please continue.
       The experiment requires that you continue.
       It is absolutely essential that you continue.
       You have no other choice, you must go on.

If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted. Otherwise, it was halted after the subject had given the maximum 450-volt shock three times in succession.

Before the experiment was conducted Milgram polled 14 Yale senior psychology majors as to what the results would be. All respondents believed that only a sadistic few (average 1.2%) would be prepared to give the maximum voltage. Milgram also informally polled his colleagues and found that they believed very few subjects would go beyond a very strong shock.

In Milgram's first set of experiments, 65% (26 out of 40) of experimental participants administered the experiment's final 450-volt shock, though many were quite uncomfortable in doing so; everyone paused at some point and questioned the experiment, some even saying they would return the check for the money they were paid. No participant steadfastly refused to give further shocks before the 300-volt level

 

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Germans

What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the questions posed in this dramatic simulation of prison life conducted in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University.

The Stanford prison experiment was a psychological study of the human response to captivity, in particular to the real world circumstances of prison life and the effects of imposed social roles on behavior. The experiment ended on August 20, 1971 and its result has been argued to demonstrate the impressionability and obedience of people when provided with a legitimizing ideology and social and institutional support.

Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their assigned roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to genuinely dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early.

A group of young men were rounded up by Palo Alto police and dropped off at a new jail -- in the Stanford Psychology Department. Strip searched, sprayed for lice and locked up with chains around their ankles, the "prisoners" were part of an experiment to test people's reactions to power dynamics in social situations. Other college student volunteers -- the "guards" -- were given authority to dictate 24-hour-a-day rules. They were soon humiliating the "prisoners" in an effort to break their will.

Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment of August 1971 quickly became a classic. Using realistic methods, Zimbardo and others were able to create a prison atmosphere that transformed its participants. The young men who played prisoners and guards revealed how much circumstances can distort individual personalities -- and how anyone, when given complete control over others, can act like a monster.

"In a few days, the role dominated the person," Zimbardo -- now president-elect of the American Psychological Association -- recalled. "They became guards and prisoners." So disturbing was the transformation that Zimbardo ordered the experiment abruptly ended.

Yes, we have freedom of will. It seems, though, that we are gradually being reduced to the "luxury" of choosing between commodities. It seems that we don’t work on our personal development; we don’t progress into a fuller, better-rounded person. Why and how? Stuart Ewen (Captains of Consciousness, 1976 p.85) calls it the promotion of the “philosophy of futility” and “lack of purpose in life” to “concentrate human attention on the more superficial things that comprise much of fashionable consumption”.