psychology

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The Abilene Paradox

How often has this happened to you: your family gets together for the holidays and ends up doing something -- going out for food, playing some game, going to see a movie -- that nobody actually wants to do? This happened to me over the holidays when my family planned a trip to a local restaurant. We all agreed to go at a certain time, because each of us assumed that everybody else wanted to go. But secretly, nobody wanted to go. We caught the situation at the last minute when somebody piped up and... READ ON

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Voice mail greetings: chipper, brusque, or designer?

M... READ ON

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Children and consciousness

There's something intrinsically trippy about being a child; before graduating into the venal world and its cabinet of chemically-induced everythings, kids have to scrape by on their imaginations. And it's funny to think back on all the consciousness-altering games/activities I supported and engaged in as a kid, and how many of them featured consciousness-altering elements. These games all revolved around a breathtakingly simple and honest premise: "What if?" or also "Something looks like something else?!"... READ ON

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The door-to-door life

I was once a Girl Scout, so I felt the pain of the youth who recently solicited my doorstep, toting miserable little items some wholesaler had signed off on. The details of his pitch were lost in the miasma of pity I was projecting out to him. I begged off by taking one of his pamphlets, but what I didn't know at the time was that his presence was in fact illegal according to the U.S. Department of Labor. For-profit door-to-door sales by minors are handled thusly in CA: California (1994) - Prohibited for... READ ON

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Kids' "Paper Laptop" Designs

Several months back, Amy Tiemann posted A kid's-eye view of laptop design on the CNET news blog. The post discussed a "mini-laptop club" at a local elementary school in which kids designed theoretical laptops using pieces of construction paper. The laptop designs employed unusual, kid-centric keyboard designs, including dedicated keys for "movie selection," "shop," "pet shop," "Hamster," and "HP [Harry Potter] trivia." Rosecrans Baldwin followed up recently with The Laptop Club, an interview with... READ ON

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Understanding Your Nerd

Nerd culture is ascendant: I recently covered the "Tact Filter" theory, an attempt to explain communication style differences between nerds and, well, normal people. Becky asked What is a nerd, anyway? prompting a discussion of what makes a nerd. Heck, we've even discussed nerdcore hip hop! Now I bring you a wonderful find for those who know and love nerds, but need help understanding them. Written as sort of a "Nerds are From Mars..." (actually, where would nerds be from? Deep Space 9? Pluto?)... READ ON

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Hugging for benefit

Ever since arriving in LA, I've been receiving invites to Cuddle Parties, gatherings I can't help but regard with suspicion, despite the "cuddlemonials." I came close to going a few times, but my co-conspirators always dissolved at the last... READ ON

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If you believe it: kids who live to tell

All the hype about the newly released Amir Bar-Lev documentary--"My Kid Could Paint That"--makes me think of when I was casting "Wiccan types" last year & more than a few mothers kept bragging to me about the past lives of their offspring. Of course, this isn't to cast any shade on Wiccans, or challenge the could-be-a-past-life-reference accounts of families--secular and otherwise--for whom I've babysat. I'm always interested in how families make sense of life & death vis-a-vis the idiosyncrasies of their... READ ON

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The "Tact Filter"

A truly useful article came up on 43 Folders this week: Jeff Bigler's "tact filter" theory. The notion is basically that normal people (hereinafter "normals") apply tact to what they say, so as not to offend; whereas nerds apply tact to what they hear, ex post facto. In practice, this means that normals communicate well with other normals, and nerds with nerds -- but when you mix the two communication styles, nerds become frustrated and normals take offense. Here's a sample from the original article:... READ ON

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How do you motivate yourself?

It's an earnest question, and I'm not interested solely so I can poach your great techniques. I'm interested because ever since my father strapped my brother into his seat so that he might be motivated to finish his dinner, I've been fascinated by what what really inspires people to finish the work in front of them--especially if these methods are extreme. An Ohio State University study on employee motivation broke down the importance of the following factors: The ranked order of motivating factors were:... READ ON