http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 … 111053.htm - Our Memory of Time Is Shortened When We Believe Products and Events Are Related
In one of the author's experiments, participants first listened to music and later took part in a creativity task. Half of the participants were then told the music they had listened to earlier enhanced creativity; the rest were not given that information. "When asked to recollect the amount of time that elapsed between listening to music and the creativity task, the first group thought that the time was significantly shorter," Faro writes. "Hence, even though both groups had (on average) the same experience with the music and with the creativity task, believing that the two things were related made participants connect them more closely in time."
Last edited by nest0r (2010 January 20, 6:31 pm)
Nukemarine
Member
From: 神奈川
Registered: 2007-07-15
Posts: 2347
liosama wrote:
Meh nothing new, everyone knew this stuff beforehand. It just takes a bored scientist to actually test out the hypothesis and write a paper about something completely obvious.
Yeah, common sense is very dependable to mesh up with what scientific studies offer.
Consider a study of men in the military during World War II. During it, they found out that men coming from the countryside faired better at adjusting to bootcamp and military life than men from urban areas in addition to revealing that less black enlisted proportionally applied for officer (leadership positions) than white enlisted men.
Common sense tells you this was the case and we didn't need to waste money doing a study to formally reveal it. Guys from the countryside are used to living in tents and hard work, while blacks at that time were not expected to be leaders thus lacked motivation to apply for it.
Problem is, I just lied to you. The study actually revealed the opposite. Men from urban areas did much better, and proportionally more black enlisted applied for officer billets. Guess what? Yep, your common sense kicks in again to justify this obvious reason again: Urban guys are used to the variety of cultures clashing and harmonizing in bootcamp while black enlisted are taking advantage to advance that wasn't offered where they came from.
The rational mind is able to justify after the fact very easily. Hell, isn't part of the rationale behind the five stages of change?
(I think I stole this from "Blink" or "Freakonomics", but it may be from some college Psychology book, not sure).
Moral: Be wary of things everyone "always knew". In all likely hood they probably didn't.
liosama
Member
From: sydney
Registered: 2008-03-02
Posts: 896
Nukemarine wrote:
Moral: Be wary of things everyone "always knew". In all likely hood they probably didn't.
The fact that the word 'placebo' exists, and was used throughout the article is enough evidence for me that this sort of stuff is well known and only a few tiny modifications were made to 'placebo' in order to make this research sound like something new and unknown.
I don't disagree that researching in things which seem to be completely obvious to us is wrong. There are many examples of research grants given to psychology faculties where they record things completely obvious to us. I can't give you an example unfortunately because such research isn't really within my interest.
One example however, is that of the research done on women who supposedly reached (better?) orgasms when the man they were having sex with was rich. Rich as opposed to handsome, better build or whatever. To me? Useless.
I'm still not convinced that this find is anything remarkable or spectacular and still am the least bit interested. Of course having been co-authored in a scientific letter (Applied Physics), I know what it's like to make a non-groundbreaking scientific contribution. Not something which everyone already knew, but nevertheless you don't understand university politics and the demands that faculties have to meet sometimes. Ridiculous papers are published and are done so to fill an empty void, meet quotas et cetera. So yes, useless research is done, plenty of it. Most faculties are driven by it and I am by no means discouraging useless research because I am a strong believer in serendipity but useless research, remains to be, useless research unfortunately.
I don't know, I find the article fascinating and can think of several useful lines of development here, but I suppose that's obvious from the fact that I posted it. The lines of development being centered around self-reporting and self-study, consciousness and learning.
Also, can't find the paper referenced in the article, but here's a variation (?) from 2005 by the same author: Perceived Causality as a Cue to Temporal Distance: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/display.asp?id=9136
Last edited by nest0r (2010 January 23, 2:40 pm)
