EOTD – On The 8 Spot

October 18, 2010

Experiment of The Day :: People In Doubt Of Their Closely Held Beliefs Advocate Their Beliefs More???

I think this is a perfect post for the Freethinkers page.

Across three experiments, people whose confidence in closely held beliefs was undermined engaged in more advocacy of their beliefs (as measured by both advocacy effort and intention to advocate) than did people whose confidence was not undermined. The effect was attenuated when individuals affirmed their beliefs, and was moderated by both importance of the belief and open-mindedness of a message recipient. These findings not only have implications for the results of Festinger’s seminal study, but also offer new insights into people’s motives for advocating their beliefs.

November 15, 2009

Learned::Biased News Has Delayed Impact | Miller-McCune Online Magazine

This is big. What this means we really have to guard against alot of the things we hear from the media, we must always try to correct media people when they report the things incorrectly. This probably means almost nobody is immune! Better Press Corp Please!

Does Biased News Have a Time Bomb Effect?
A European study shows that, over time, even the most sophisticated readers can be manipulated.
By: Melinda Burns | November 09, 2009 | 05:00 AM (PST) |
Even the most hardened Europeans may succumb to media manipulation and change their political views if they are bombarded long enough with biased news.
There's nobody more cynical about the media than your average European.
Only 12 percent of Europeans claim to trust the media, compared to 15 percent of North Americans, 29 percent of Pacific Asians and 48 percent of Africans, the BBC has found.
Yet new research out of the London School of Economics and Political Science suggests that even the most hardened Europeans may succumb to media manipulation and change their political views if they are bombarded long enough with biased news.
via Politics Articles | Biased News Has Delayed Impact | Miller-McCune Online Magazine.

July 9, 2009

Paradox Of Choice Experiment::Is less always more? : Cognitive Daily

Such a simple but illuminating experiment, click through to find their results!

But is less always more? Most of the studies on number of choices have either given participants a very small or a very large number of options. Does this mean just one choice is the best? Or is there some larger number of choices that is optimal?
To find out, Avni Shah and George Wolford set up a table in a busy corridor at Dartmouth University and asked passersby to help their department select the best pen to order for its supply closet. They varied the number of pens sampled from 2 to 20. Each pen was similarly priced at around $2, and while each pen was different, all were “roller-ball” style pens with black ink.
via Is less always more? : Cognitive Daily.

June 1, 2009

Random Wikipedia facts 2009 06 01

A me and a couple of friends were arguing awhile last thursday about the most populous and also about population density of cities, based on wikipedia I was wrong and tokyo is both more populous and had a higher population density than seoul, but based on 2007 figures the population density of seoul is higher, but the argument is useles because Karachi,Cairo,Kolkota, and Mumbai has about twice the population densities of both tokyo and seoul. The scary thing is that if we trust wikipedia the manila and alot of the other cities that comprise the metro manila have population densities that are about 2-10x higher than that of karachi, this is wierd to me and does not pass the smell test, don’t know but this is really surprising for me.