“ ’Egocentricity’ in Adult Conversation,” is one of several studies featured in the article “Soft Is Hard: Psychologists Under the Bed — further evidence why the ‘soft’ sciences are the hardest to do well,” which is one of the articles in the special Numbers issue of the Annals of Improbable Research, which is one of […]
Tag: Soft Is Hard
It’s a Mess: Attempt to Connect the Messy Dots of Messy, Hard-to-Define Phenomena
What happens when you try to use new technological tools to measure and map things that are tough to define — so tough to define that people go half-crazy if they try to agree on the details of any of the definitions? The results can be messy, this paper suggests. Very messy: “Fledgling pathoconnectomics of […]
A Quick Take on Fast Walkers
Some scientists struggle to understand walking, as is evident in this study: “Walking Fast—Ranking High: A Sociobiological Perspective on Pace,” A. Schmitt and K. Atzwanger, Ethology and Sociobiology, vol. 17, no. 5, September 1996, pp. 451–62. The authors explain [AIR 15:5]: “We hypothesized that habitual fast walking might be a means to acquire and/or to […]
The Unhappiness of Handsome Husbands
“Beyond Initial Attraction: Physical Attractiveness in Newlywed Marriage,” James K. McNulty, Lisa A. Neff, and Benjamin R. Karney, Journal of Family Psychology, vol. 22, no. 1, February 2008, pp. 135–43. (Thanks to Ron Josephson for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, who are variously at University of Tennessee, University of Toledo, and University of […]
Alcoholics’ preference discovered
“Recreation, Leisure and the Alcoholic,” H. Douglas Sessoms and Sidney R. Oakley, Journal of Leisure Research, vol. 1, no. 1, 1969, pp. 21–32. The authors report: “The Curriculum in Recreation Administration of the University of North Carolina and the Alcoholic Rehabilitation Center (ARC) at Butner, N.C., jointly undertook and investigation of the leisure patterns of […]
Scientists Now Know: Intimacy
“Associations of Sex and Type of Relationship on Intimacy,” D. Salas and K.E. Ketzenberger, Psychological Reports, vol. 94, no. 3, part 2, June 2004, pp. 1322–4. The authors, who are at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, in Odessa, report that [AIR 16:1]: “Both men and women reported significantly higher mean scores on […]
Pencil-Chomping & Race Bias in Several Persons
Although it involves just a few test subjects, a pencil-chomp study presumably provides insight into the hard-to-measure subject of race bias. “The Influence of Facial Feedback on Race Bias,” Tiffany A. Ito, Krystal W. Chiao, Patricia G. Devine, Tyler S. Lorig, and John T. Cacioppo, Psychological Science, vol. 17, no. 3, 2006. (Thanks to investigator […]
Appreciating organizational psychopaths
Psychopathology is a little-publicized branch of science. This monograph in particular received surprisingly little acclaim when it was published: “The Dark Side of Management Decisions: Organisational Psychopaths,” Clive Roland Boddy, Management Decision, vol. 44, no. 10, 2006, pp. 1461–75. [AIR 15:4] (Thanks to Martin Gardiner for bringing this to our attention.) The author, at Middlesex […]
Being Mark Campell Williams
“Rich Pictures on the Path Towards Systemic Being,” Mark Campbell Williams, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, vol. 16, no. 4, July–August 1999, pp 369–73. The author, at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia, explains: I interpret some of my own rich pictures from a five-year investigation of teaching reform in a university business computing course. […]
Carmen Miranda and Her Hat
’The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat’: Carmen Miranda, a Spectacle of Ethnicity,” Shari Roberts, Cinema Journal, vol. 32, no. 3, Spring 1993, pp. 3–23. (http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1225876). (That’s an except from the article “Soft Is Hard,” Published in AIR 15:3.)