Some really interesting topics this week:
Embodied and Enclothed Cognition was a piece from one of
David McRaney’s interviews over at You Are Not So Smart. I love that podcast, too bad it is only once
a month. The interview I discussed in
this post talks about the power of uniforms.
When you are wearing clothing that has a link to a particular ability or
attribute, it has a powerful influence on you.
Imagine how different you might behave if you are wearing a doctor’s lab
coat, a military uniform, a punk rocker’s outfit, or whatever. It is unconscious, but influential
nonetheless.
Entooled Cognition.
When you are holding a hammer, the whole world is a nail. It seems this is more true than we
thought. Perhaps the reason we respond
so quickly to emails is not that it is easy, it is that our hands are already
on the keyboard. Maybe we need to tie
our hands down. Or better yet, use
speech-based interfaces and have our emails read to us while we are across the
room.
The Ethics and Big Data Research post was written before I
realized that everyone was going to jump on the Facebook research
bandwagon. And of course, my take on it
was different than most because I was thinking as someone who teaches research
ethics to future practitioners who might find themselves exactly where Facebook
is today. In fact, that is why we teach
it. Good thing too, it seems.
The Priming with Music piece was based on a really
fascinating article I read that looked at some fundamental ways that music
affects thinking. The fascinating part
is that abstract musical structures can prime your thinking to be abstract. And detail-oriented music can have the
opposite effect – leading you to think more detailed. Priming is not surprising any more – just look
at how many times I post about it. But
this kind of priming is much more fundamental and I think has broader and more
powerful implications. For good and for
evil HF purposes, so be careful.
