I should really start this blog up again

It seems to be more and more relevent to daily life.

So, let's start with me sending you over to help Garrett Kennedy at the Univ. of Wolverhampton (UK) who is researching religion and belief for the masters degree:

PsychologyandBelief.com

(Tip of the hat to randi.org).

Building a picture

Now this is my kind of humor. It's the word at the end that kills me. Heh heh.

Expelled: The Movie

Ben Stein believes intelligent design and creationist science is being "Expelled" from mainstream science. Perhaps he should read Expelled Exposed.

I knew you were going to say that...

...I just scanned your brain.

A study recently published in Nature Neuroscience and reported at Wired.com states that researches could predict simple decisions made by people seven seconds before they were consciously aware of their own decision.

The participants in the study had to make a decision whether to press a button with their left or right hand.

"In the seven seconds before Haynes' test subjects chose to push a button, activity shifted in their frontopolar cortex, a brain region associated with high-level planning. Soon afterwards, activity moved to the parietal cortex, a region of sensory integration. Haynes' team monitored these shifting neural patterns using a functional MRI machine.

Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand -- a choice that, to them, felt like the outcome of conscious deliberation. For those accustomed to thinking of themselves as having free will, the implications are far more unsettling than learning about the physiological basis of other brain functions"

The implications being that free will might be an illusion.

I'd personally see it more of a computer analogy. A simple computer diagram would be input(plus instructions)->processing->output. I would argue that after input and instructions, we don't consciously come to a decision until the output stage, with our subconscious taking care of the processing part and our conscious mind converting the electrical impulses back to understandable thoughts.

I'm thinking of data+instructions: Right or Left plus data from the task.

Processing: Data and instructions are now electrical impulses in the brain, being processed.

Output: Electrical impulses carrying the "result" back are brought translated back into conscious thought.

I would guess the researchers in this case are like a computer being able to read binary before it's converted into output.

Your personality test results are in:

"You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic."

If you rated this out of 5, where 0 is very poor and 5 is excellent, what would you give it?

The above was written to demonstrate what's known as the Forer, or Barnum, effect. It is the observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.
(full article at Wikipedia)

This is one of the things that "psychics" and cold-readers take advantage of when providing someone with a reading. Along with fishing for information, reading a person's dress and vocabulary, along with just plain guessing.

The JREF has a great article about the experiences and accuracy of someone pretending to be a legitimate "psychic reader", it's really fascinating stuff, especially how accurate people thought she was.

I just agreed with everyone else!

I wanted to bring up this interesting press release from the University of Michigan (reported on BrainMysteries) - you are probably aware on how your opinion can be affected by other people's opinions in your group, but apparently a single person's opinion repeated often enough has nearly as much influence as one expressed by many different people.

So next time you're thinking about going with the flow, make sure you're aware of how many times your group's squeaky wheel has spoken!

You have to be in it to win it!

Here's a nice entry on the psychology of another belief: Winning the Lottery.

The Psychology of the Lottery page gives a breakdown of the various lottery games and the odds of winning - but not only that, but real-life examples of those odds - Winning Pick 10 for example has the same odds as you being struck and killed by lightning this year!

So why do we play? Well, obviously it's fun - but also learn more about the lesser know reasons of Availability Heuristics (how often you hear about winners), the Gamblers Fallacy (the belief a number or numbers is "due" to come out), and again your confirmation bias.