Judging who, or what, judges people best

This week’s Gestalt Which-of-These-Alternatives-Do-You-See? Question asks you to look at a newly published study. The question is: What, exactly, is this study judging? The study is “Computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those made by humans“, Wu Youyou, Michal Kosinski [pictured here], and David Stillwell, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, epub January 12, 2015. The authors […]

Kids distinguish improbable from impossible?

A new study suggests that (perhaps unlike certain adults?) most children easily distinguish between the improbable and the impossible. The study is: “Young children discriminate improbable from impossible events in fiction,” Deena Skolnick Weisberg [pictured here, sort of] and David M. Sobel, Cognitive Development (in press). The authors explain: “Can young children discriminate impossible events, which cannot […]

Tuk’s take on her Ig for urine-pressured decisions

Deutsche Welle interviews Mirjam Tuk about the 2011 Ig Nobel Prize in medicine, which she and her colleagues in Europe shared with an unrelated group in Australia and the US. Here’s the beginning of the interview (and click here for audio): Deutsche Welle: You are one of this year’s winners of the Ig Nobel prize […]