Evolution Psychology · 4 May 2012 ·
Presenting at the LEL Postgraduate conference: Implicit and Explicit Iterative Mindreading
I will present a paper on my dissertation topic, iterative mind-reading, at this year’s LEL postgraduate conference. This work is based on a collaboration with Cathleen O’Grady, under the supervision of Kenny Smith and Thom Scott-Phillips.
You can find the abstract here:
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Psychology Science · 15 April 2012 ·
Baseline testosterone in hunter-gatherer societies: Actually not that high.
A recent article by Trumble et al. (2012) investigates testosterone levels in the Tsimane, hunter-gatherer society in the Bolivian Amazon. They organised a competitive football match between eight different Tsimane villages (Seriously, how cool is that – organising a football match as part of your research?), tested testosterone levels of the (male) players men before and after a match and compared these to testosterone levels in an age-matched male US sample. The authors have two key-findings: On the one hand, both groups show increased testosterone levels in a competitive football match. On the other hand, baseline testosterone levels are lower in the Tsimane.
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Politics Psychology · 14 October 2011 ·
When did you decide to become heterosexual?
The best way to present and argument isn’t always confrontational. Sometimes (or should I say often) it’s better to ask the right questions, so that they can work it out themselves. “When did you decide to become heterosexual?” is one of them. It’s not offensive, direct—and gets people thinking.
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Psychology Personal · 12 August 2011 ·
Good news!
This arrived in my inbox today:
Dear Christian Kliesch,
I would like to inform you that your paper “Making sense of syntax – Innate or acquired? Contrasting Universal Grammar with other approaches to language acquisition” has been accepted.
…
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Psychology Politics · 8 March 2011 ·
How can this be...?
A man and his son were away for a trip. They were driving along the highway when they had a terrible accident. The man was killed outright but the son was alive, although badly injured. The son was rushed to the hospital and was to have an emergency operation. On entering the operating theatre, the surgeon looked at the boy, and said, “I can’t do this operation. This boy is my son.” How can this be?
(Source: Sanford, A. J. (1985). Cognition and cognitive psychology. London:Weidenfeld and Nicolson.)
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Psychology · 7 February 2011 ·
What's insane anyways?
It’s already hard to define insanity, but it’s even harder to define what’s sane. What is considered to be sane behaviour in one condition might be considered completely insane in another, but even this depends on the context. If you see an old man crouching crouching and quacking through his garden, it is likely to think that this man must have lost his mind. But when you know that this man was the famous ethologist Konrad Lorenz, trying to imprint a group of ducklings hidden in the grass, you would interpret the actions quite differently (Watzlawick et al., 1967, p. 20). Thus, sanity has a lot to do with the intentions we are trying to attribute to another’s mind: If we can follow them, they are sane, otherwise not.
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Psychology Science · 9 July 2010 ·
Fear, Faces and the Amygdala
Brain imaging techniques such as CT, fMRI and EEG have revolutionised psychology. They are indeed exciting technologies that can offer insights into the way our brain works. And thus, scientific columns in newspapers regularly report that a behaviour or perception can be linked to a certain brain area. The idea is that if we know that if a brain area is active during a certain task that is otherwise not, it is involved in the process, or, if a brain area is defective and with it specific cognitive functions, then these are linked, too. But things are not as simple. (They never are) Just because an area is active during a cognitive process does not necessarily tell you what it actually does.
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Politics Psychology · 22 June 2010 ·
Jeremy Rifkin - The Empathic Civilisation
This is a really cool way to illustrate lecture content. This particular talk is by Jeremy Rifkin on the evolution of empathy. You can finde more videos like that on the RSA’s Youtube channel.
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Antipatterns Psychology · 4 June 2008 ·
How do you want to die today?
After the horrible attacks on the WTC many people decided to take their car instead of a plane. However, this is actually even more dangerous.