Pornographic Picture Processing Interferes with Working Memory Performance
Researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen found that looking at internet porn has a negative effect on working memory.
Wait a second . . . did I already post this link?
This was written by an ad man but I can see it applying to other endeavors, like designing a software interface:
If you show a client a highly polished computer layout, he will probably reject it.
There is either too much to worry about or not enough to worry about. They are equally bad.
It is a fait accompli.
There is nothing for him to do. It’s not his work, it’s your work. He doesn’t feel involved.
If he doesn’t like the face of the girl in your rendering, or the style of the trousers on the man on the right, or the choice of the car he’s driving, he’s going to reject it.
He won’t see the big idea. He will look at the girl’s face and think, ‘I don’t like her, this doesn’t feel right.’
It is very difficult for him to imagine anything else if what you show him has such detail.
Show the client a scribble.
Explain it to him, talk him through it, let him use his imagination.
Get him involved.
Because you haven’t shown the exact way it’s going to be, there’s scope to interpret it and develop and change it as you progress.
Work with him rather than confronting him with your idea.
Now, if we want people to do certain things and if we are indifferent as to why they do them, then no affective appeals need be excluded. Some political candidates want us to vote for them regardless of our reasons for doing so. Therefore, if we hate the rich, they will snarl at the rich for us; if we dislike strikers, they will snarl at the strikers; if we like clambakes, they will throw clambakes; if the majority of us like hillbilly music, they may say nothing about the problems of government, but travel among their constituencies with hillbilly bands.
Consider a survey of nearly one million high school seniors. When asked to judge their ability to get along with others, 100 percent rated themselves as at least average, 60 percent rated themselves in the top 10 percent, and 25 percent considered themselves in the top 1 percent. And when asked about their leadership skills, only 2 percent assessed themselves as below average. Teachers aren’t any more realistic: 94 percent of college professors say they do above-average work.
The human brain is a better lawyer than scientist. A scientific brain would form hypotheses, test them against the evidence and reject the ones that don’t pass. The lawyer brain starts with a conclusion that it wants to be true, formulates supporting arguments and discounts evidence to the contrary.
Studies show that people with the most accurate self-perceptions tend to be moderately depressed, suffer from low self-esteem or both. An overly positive self-evaluation, on the other hand, helps our minds defend us against unhappiness and inspires us to become what we think we are.
Whenever you perceive that a virtue is missing or that a vice is present, you either tolerate the situation or try to change it. If you cannot “fix” it, you can at least withdraw your participation. The problem with tolerating the absence of virtue or the existence of vice is that this choice summons them into your life.
You might tell yourself stories about the problem you perceive and your tolerance of it:
- That’s just the way it is in the real world.
- Others will not listen even-handedly to your perceptions and advice.
- It’s not your place to say truthful but difficult things.
- The problem lies in another department.
- You are not reading the situation correctly. You may not be able to discern beauty from ugliness or efficiency from waste, and your ignorance will be exposed. You’ll be rejected or ridiculed.
- You will look dumb if you ask for help to resolve any uncertainty.
Acknowledge that if you tolerate it, you insist on it. If you insist on something, you are its creator.
A false conclusion once arrived at and widely accepted is not easily dislodged, and the less it is understood the more tenaciously it is held.
I was late because the directions were useless. You were late because you’re a disorganized person . . .
We all tend to assume that other people think like us. But they don’t. Psychologists call this the false consensus bias . . .
Users don’t think like programmers. They don’t recognize the patterns and cues programmers use to work with, through, and around an interface . . .
Behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman suggests that we have two selves: an experiencing self and a remembering self. . . . Your experiencing self lives in the present and is happiest spending time around people you like. . . .
The remembering self cares about story, and about appearances. . . .
Your remembering self cares about money and mobility deeply. Why? No one wants to be remembered as the person who “didn’t do anything with their life.” Getting rich and moving around a lot adds dramatic, tangible plot-points to your story, which comforts your remembering self greatly. But your experiencing self can easily be less happy. What if you are unable to turn your money into people you enjoy spending time with? What if you move away from the people and places that bring you joy?
Here’s conundrum of fame, as I see it: It’s always said that if you want to be famous, you must endure criticism. The fabled “trade off”…
…But the whole reason people want to be famous is to be loved. They’re love-addicts. Hating a celeb is like kicking a hemophiliac.
Like I bet Tom Hanks internalizes a shitty remark way more than, say, the HR lady in your office. He’s needy. That’s why he’s Tom Hanks.
All right, enough Psych 101. My Chihuahua looks like Billy Crystal and my Shepherd is Gheorghe Muresan. They need a development deal.
One of my owner’s friends gave me a Christmas pug to use on my blog. My first present of the season! Thanks, MS!
The pug looks a little sad, probably because someone made him wear that stupid Santa hat. Pugs don’t like to wear hats. We may look like funny little animals, but don’t forget we are descended from the mighty gray wolf. Before you put a Santa hat on a pug, try putting a Santa hat on a wolf. That will teach you a good lesson.
Don’t think that the pug is sad because of the snow. Pugs love snow! A day in the snow is the best day ever! Now that I think about it, every day is the best day ever!
Oh, one more thing: I do NOT endorse Popdarts.com. Do not go to that site. Go to sites that support pugs.
Oops — my owner just told me that if you tell people not to do something, that just makes them want to do it even more. It’s called “reverse psychology.” That doesn’t make sense to me. Pugs can be a little stubborn, but mostly we like to do what we’re told, because it makes our owners happy.
Here’s another phrase my owner taught me recently: “eating your own dogfood.” To humans, it means doing what you tell other people to do. To dogs, it means . . . well, I guess it’s pretty obvious what it means.
Merry Christmas, everybody! I’ll post some more Christmas pug pictures later.
— Lightning 
When we give up trying to convince, we become more convincing.
So — I should give up trying to convince in an effort to become more convincing?
A fat woman at the office, sitting at her desk finger-fondling a frosted gingerbread man, whether because it was “male” or because it was edible, I’m not sure. It’s no less disturbing either way.
Parenthetically: I don’t think she knew anyone could see her . . .
John F. Kennedy, in 1961, proposed to put an American on the moon in a decade. That idea stuck. It motivated thousands of people across dozens of organizations, public and private. It was an unexpected idea: it got people’s attention because it was so surprising–the moon is a long way up. It appealed to our emotions: we were in the Cold War and the Russians had launched the Sputnik space satellite four years earlier. It was concrete: everybody could picture what success would look like in the same way. How many goals in your organization are pictured in exactly the same way by everyone involved?
My father worked for IBM during that period. He did some of the programming on the original Gemini space missions. And he didn’t think of himself as working for IBM–he thought of himself as helping to put an American on the moon. An accountant who lived down the street from us, who worked for a defense contractor, also thought of himself as helping to put an American on the moon. When you inspire the accountants you know you’re onto something.
The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.
Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny.
My son’s having some trouble with 8th grade Algebra. When I work with him on it, I can see that he knows the material and he can do the calculations . . . his biggest problem is a fatalistic, let’s-get-it-over-with, I’m-no-good-at-math attitude, which leads to careless errors, and frustration if his first approach to a problem doesn’t work.
I encourage him to take a more positive attitude, to go into the next test saying positive things to himself, like “I know this material” and “I can handle these questions.”
“But I don’t know it,” he says. “Mrs. Bryant [his math teacher] throws the gyroball every pitch! And sometimes she hits me with it!”
What we have here is a classic self-fulfilling prophecy . . .
The halo effect is a cognitive bias whereby people tend to make specific inferences on the basis of a general impression. It was first identified by psychologist Edward Thorndike in 1920.
I read an interesting article this weekend by Phil Rosenzweig, the author of The Halo Effect: … and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers, on the halo effect in the business world:
Imagine a company that is doing well, with rising sales, high profits, and a sharply increasing stock price. The tendency is to infer that the company has a sound strategy, a visionary leader, motivated employees, an excellent customer orientation, a vibrant culture, and so on. But when that same company suffers a decline–if sales fall and profits shrink–many people are quick to conclude that the company’s strategy went wrong, its people became complacent, it neglected its customers, its culture became stodgy, and more. In fact, these things may not have changed much, if at all. Rather, company performance, good or bad, creates an overall impression–a halo–that shapes how we perceive its strategy, leaders, employees, culture, and other elements.
For example, when Cisco Systems was riding high in the late 1990s, it was widely praised for its “brilliant strategy, masterful management of acquisitions, and superb customer focus.” When the tech bubble burst, Cisco was said to have “a flawed strategy, haphazard acquisition management, and poor customer relations.”
Another example: When ABB — a European engineering firm — was performing well, it had an “elegant matrix design, risk-taking culture, and charismatic chief executive.” When the company’s performance dropped off, ABB had “a dysfunctional organization, a chaotic culture, and an arrogant CEO.”
In reality, neither company had changed much; only the perceptions had changed.
Most of the business books I read are full of this type of after-the-fact “analysis,” where judgments are merely attributions reflecting a company’s performance. It appeals to managers who’d like to find a simple formula that ensures success.
If success could be reduced to a simple formula, there’d be a lot more successful managers and companies . . .
Perhaps most surprising to us has been the degree to which fear appears to be a feature of modern work life. Whenever we talk with others about this work, such as on airplanes with strangers, we get a similar response — “Oh yeah, I can relate to wanting to speak up but biting my tongue.” It’s really a shame how much apparently untapped knowledge there is out there and how much pain and frustration results from this silence. That, too, has been somewhat surprising–that people are genuinely hurt and frustrated about their silence. This suggests that employees aren’t failing to provide ideas or input because they’ve “checked out” and just don’t care, but because of fear.
What is happening here? Let’s examine some possibilities:
Assuming neither of these conditions holds, people make a decision to speak or hold their tongue based on the specific features of the situation, including a calculation of how what they have to say is likely to affect their job security and/or mobility.
People who don’t care about job security or mobility are therefore able to be more fully engaged in their work, ask questions that need to be asked and say things that need to be said.
Hence the old saying that the effective leader must come to work everyday prepared to lose his or her job . . .
Jerry Weinberg‘s top three reasons for software projects going over budget or failing to meet their original requirements:
The original budget, schedule and requirements were totally unrealistic, due to the inability of people to speak truth to power.
The original budget, schedule and requirements were totally unrealistic, due to the inability of people to understand and acknowledge their own limitations (which we all have).
Even in those rare cases that people pass those first two hurdles, they lose emotional control during the project when something goes wrong — and something ALWAYS goes wrong. In 50 years, I’ve never seen a project where something didn’t go wrong. When it does, the project’s success is determined by the leaders’ ability to manage themselves emotionally.
I’m rereading parts of The Psychology of Computer Programming and I notice that several of Weinberg’s “food for thought” questions at the end of each chapter would be good questions to pose to a hiring manager:
