Posts Tagged ‘Psychology’

Comic Con: Mandy Caruso dressed in racy costume recalls sexual harassment by fans | Mail Online

Sunday, October 21st, 2012

A 23-year-old woman is revealing the sexual harassment she endured at Comic Con when she dressed in a racy costume for the gathering of comic book, fantasy and science fiction fans. 

Mandy Caruso, a fashion designer, dressed as super heroine Black Cat and wore a skin-tight leather outfit that ‘has a fair amount of cleavage.’

It’s common for young women to dress in revealing and deliberately skimpy costumes for comic conventions. It’s also common, Miss Caruso revealed in a post on her blog, for them to be sexually harassed by overzealous fans. 

She described several encounters at last weekend’s New York Comic Con with men who posed for pictures ogling her breasts. She also recounted being ‘surrounded’ by a camera crew who claimed to be be filming a feature on fans, but instead seemed more interested in talking about her cup size.


Racy: This is Mandy Caruso's skin-tight Black Car outfit, which admittedly shows 'more than a little cleavage'

 

Comic Con: Mandy Caruso dressed in racy costume recalls sexual harassment by fans | Mail Online.

DIY Rorschach Necklace

Sunday, September 23rd, 2012

Look familiar, psychologists?

 

Finished!

link

Duck Rabbit

Monday, July 30th, 2012

 

Door on Astoria Bvld.  ~26th Street.

The company’s logo is the Duck Rabbit illusion.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma on Facebook

Saturday, June 9th, 2012

I love social psychology, but if I could go to college and grad school again, I’d focus more on math and game theory.  Game theory is the mathematical study of decision making.  Rational decision making.  One of the two popularly known examples from game theory are the prisoner’s dilemma and the commons dilemma.  I teach both in my social psychology class.  The prisoner’s dilemma was developed at RAND in the 1950’s and usually is stated like this:

Two men are arrested, but the police do not possess enough information for a conviction. Following the separation of the two men, the police offer both a similar deal—if one testifies against his partner (defects/betrays), and the other remains silent (cooperates/assists), the betrayer goes free and the cooperator receives the full one-year sentence. If both remain silent, both are sentenced to only one month in jail for a minor charge. If each ‘rats out’ the other, each receives a three-month sentence. Each prisoner must choose either to betray or remain silent; the decision of each is kept quiet. What should they do? [wikipedia]

The research focuses upon iterated prisoner’s dilemmas, when two individuals play this game several times over.  What is the best strategy to adopt to keep your collective sentence to a minimum?  Should you always defect or cooperate?  Should you switch?  Should you try to “game” your opponent or deduce their strategy and then build your strategy accordingly?

I play Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook.  It’s a time waster but an addictive game.  Most Facebook games are based upon exploiting your friends on Facebook to gain an advantage in the game and Bejeweled Blitz is no exception.  To gain high scores you need to “buy” boosts using “gold coins.”  Each day a player can send 35 sets of gift coins to your Facebook friends playing Bejeweled Blitz.  When receiving these gifts in your mailbox you accept the coins and then have the option of sending a set of gift coins back.

I send most of my gifts each day to my wife, because I know she will quickly send gifts back.  Today, as I was receiving gifts from my wife, I noticed that in the mailbox you had the option of just accepting the coins or accepting and returning a gift to the sender.

 

And then I realized that Bejeweled Blitz is an iterated prisoner’s dilemma.  I had the choice of defecting (accepting w/out returning) or cooperating (accepting and returning).  Since then I’ve found that there the prisoner’s dilemma can be found in other aspects of social networking.

 

Unbreakable

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012

 

http://projectunbreakable.tumblr.com/

If you are a cognitive psychologist, this is kinda’ cute

Monday, April 16th, 2012

 

gocomics.com

If the growth serum didn’t work, the sound wouldn’t be able to carry since everything would be too far away from the correct floor. A closed window would also prevent the sound from carrying, since most buildings tend to be well insulated. Since the whole operation depends on a steady flow of mutagens, a break in the middle of the genome would also cause problems. Of course, the fellow could shout, but the human voice is not loud enough to carry that far. An additional problem is that a string could break on the instrument. Then there could be no accompaniment to the message. It is clear that the best situation would involve less distance. Then there would be fewer potential problems. With face to face contact, the least number of things could go wrong. 

For non-cognitive psychologists

Art and Psychology mix

Sunday, March 25th, 2012

The gigantic neon smiley face, known as the Feel-o-Meter or Public Face, displayed the mood of the city in real time. Hooked up to a sophisticated software system first developed in 2007 by the Fraunhofer Institut that analyzed the facial expression of random city-goers, it fed the data to the smiley. The smiley then subsequently shifted its expression in real time from happy to sad or neutral depending on the overall emotional state of the people.

link

Stare at the dot for 5 minutes. Can you see the shark?

Monday, February 13th, 2012

 

A clever parody of optical illusions.

Wait, wait …

Monday, February 13th, 2012

SAGAL: This is from a study in the Journal of Personality. It is called that because it’s not very good looking.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Oh, the journal, it has personality.

– Peter Sagal, Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me.  12/10/11

To listen.

 

Please allow me to blow your mind

Friday, December 30th, 2011